The Delicate Beauty of Russian Lacquer Boxes

 

QUESTION:  I have came across a box at a thrift store and after researching I am not sure it is or is not an authentic Russian Lacquer box. I was wondering what you thought?

ANSWER: According to my research, I believe your box was made in the village of Palekh, Russia, where similar boxes have been made. Also, the illustrations on the box seem to follow those on other Palekh boxes. Boxes exported out of Russia usually have a paper sticker on the bottom indicating that the box had been made in the USSR, or for later ones, Russia. These labels often fall off, but this box also has a mark in Cyrillic script. 

Russian lacquer art developed from the art of icon painting which came to an end with the collapse of Imperial Russia. The icon painters, who previously had been employed by supplying not only churches but people's homes, needed a way to make a living. Thus, the craft of making papier-mache decorative boxes developed. They lacquered the boxes, then artists hand painted them, often with scenes from folk tales, such as the tale of the Firebird, or of Prince Igor, or of Swan Lake.

Princesses dance, czars scowl, knights do battle, horses fly, suns smile, Father Frost puffs icy wind, and lovers embrace on glossy black backgrounds of lacquered papier-mache, surrounded by spectacular borders of gold filigree. Vivid reds and yellows dominated these scenes, with greens and blues and ivories typically reserved for highlights and details.

In finer boxes, artists often applied paint over gold or silver, producing a luminescence reminiscent of traditional Russian icon painting. The brushwork could be astonishingly intricate and detailed and beautifully rendered in the kind of stylized realism associated with European miniature paintings of the Middle Ages.

Artists in four villages—Fedoskino, Palekh, Kholui and Mstyora—made these lacquered boxes. All except Fedoskino lie in the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality, Ivanovo region of central Russia, and have been deeply rooted in the 17th- to 19th-century icon painting tradition, which lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The latter two villages, both north of Moscow, were for centuries an important home of traditional Russian icon painters, whose gilded portraits of-melancholy saints and dolorous Madonnas were the essential art form of czarist Russia. After the 1917 revolution, however, the new Bolshevik government banned religious art, and the icon makers turned to legends and folk tales and poems for their subjects.

The papier-mache process, used to make these lacquer boxes, took about six weeks to ensure that it wouldn’t warp, didn’t expand and contract with temperature, and had a linseed oil base which rendered it impervious to moisture. The papier-mache, itself, consisted of cardboard covered with flour paste which workers then shaped, coated with warm linseed oil, planed, and sanded. Artists applied clay, oil, and soot as an undercoating that they smoothed with a pumice stone, then lacquered and primed in preparation for the artist.

Although black was the most common color for a background, artists also used red, blue, green, and white backgrounds. Red was the most challenging background to paint on a lacquer box because the other colors don’t come forward. By contrast, a black background wasn’t only dramatic, but also the easiest color with which to work.

The crafting of Russian lacquer boxes dates back to the 18th century and the reign of Peter the Great. Originally used for holding snuff, these boxes have evolved into many different shapes and sizes for holding things like jewelry and money.

By the mid 18th century, tobacco became affordable for ordinary people, and the need for a box to hold the snuff became necessary. The wealthy had stored their snuff in boxes made out of ivory. gold, and other precious materials, but inexpensive lacquer boxes became a good alternative for poorer folk.

In 1795, while traveling to Germany, Pyotr Korobov came across the factory of Johann Heinrich Stobwasser in Braunschweig. Korobov became intrigued by the lacquer items produced there and took supplies back home to the village of Fedoskino to make his own. 

Decorated snuftboxes, made in Fedoskino in great quantities in the early 19th century by Piet:Vasieiievich Lukutin, were probably the finest of all old Russian lacquer boxes but today are extremely rare. Lukutin's boxes were durable, but the processes he employed in producing a perfect material for his lacquer work from compressed sheets of cardboard were lengthy and painstaking. Evidently Lukutin realized that the success of "japanning" depended upon the quality of the papier-mache itself. He gave his boxes numerous coatings of lacquer laboriously hand polishing them between applications. He obtained a fine patina by first soaking his boxes in vegetable oil and hardening them in low-heat ovens for a long time.

Artists decorated the earliest Lukutin boxes with themes similar to those used by English and German decorators at the time. They used landscapes and skylines as well as genre subjects. They also decorated boxes with mother-of-pearl. Toward the middle of the 19th century, they began decorating the boxes with Russian folk motifs. From 1828 on, the Lutkin family marked the boxes with the Imperial eagle and the various initials of the members of the family in charge of the factory at the time. They continued to run the business successfully until it closed in 1904.

The styles of decorations of papier-mache boxes in the village of Palekh differed from those decorated at the old Lutkin works. In 1917 some of the artists and craftsmen of the lacquer industry formed cooperatives and revived the art before it became lost. But it wasn’t until Ivan Golikov applied icon painting techniques to lacquered papier-mache in 1922 that many of the icon painters of pre-Revolutionary days began work in Palekh decorating lacquer boxes. Painted in egg tempera rather than the oils used in Fedoskino, the Palekh style is fanciful and somewhat less realistic than those of the original village. The artists of both Kholui and Mstyora also used egg tempera paint.

Another difference was the subject matter they painted and how they painted it. Fedoskino was known for realistic impressionistic scenes, while the other three focused on relic paintings that were less realistic. Originally, Palekh made relic paintings for the rich: Kholuy and Mstyora made relic paintings for the middle class and poor.

Palekh boxes appeared at the beginning of the 20th century almost always on a black background. Along with historical subjects, Palekh's artists also painted contemporary themes and scenes of rural life, such as threshing, harvesting, and hay-mowing. Their depictions of humans tend to have much longer bodies than those of Kholuy or Mstyora. Palekh lacquer boxes almost always have a hand-painted golden border design. But it was the artists Ivan Gofikov and his brother-in-law Alexander Glazunov who really made Palekh famous for its lacquer boxes which had the most sophisticated decoration, considered unrivaled in composition, color, and execution.

Tourist guides frequently tell their tour groups that a signature on the bottom of the box indicates that a master painted it. However, in reality most lacquer boxes came from small factories where signing another artist's name was no more difficult than painting in his style. Instead of checking for the signature of an artist, buyers should consider the quality and detail of the artwork_ Many of the lacquer boxes produced in the former Soviet Union have exceptional detail and command astronomical prices, yet have no signature. Box sellers rather then the artists themselves have perpetuated the signature myth of the signatures.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Federal America" in the 2026 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Sparkle of American Brilliant Cut Glass

 

QUESTION: I have a large cut-glass bowl that belonged to my grandmother. As I’m fast approaching 70, I was hoping to find a home for it. My adult children have no interest in it. Do people collect cut glass? 

ANSWER: People definitely collect pieces of cut glass, especially American Brilliant cut glass. 

American Brilliant cut glass was a symbol of elegance in Victorian America from around 1850 to the beginning of World War I. Middle class to wealthy people liked to give pieces as wedding and anniversary presents. Immigrants helped supply glass houses in the United States with skilled cutters allowing them to develop a product rivaling European cut glass. Prior to that time, most cut glass pieces came from England, France, and Ireland.

Historians trace the first cut glass to ancient Egypt in 1,500 BCE, where artisans decorated vessels of varying sizes by cuts made by what they believed to have been metal drills. Artifacts dating to the 6th century BCE indicate that the Romans, Assyrians and Babylonians all had mastered the art of cut glass decoration. Slowly glass cutting moved to Constantinople, then on to Venice, and by the end of the 16th century, to Prague. Apparently the art didn’t spread to the Britain until the early part of the 18th century.

The New World didn’t see any cut glass until at least 160 years later. Henry William Stiegel, an immigrant from Cologne, Germany, founded the American Flint Glass Manufactory in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and it was there in about 1771 that he produced the first cut glass in America.

For the next 60 years, the "Early Period" of American cut glass, pieces were indistinguishable from English, Irish and continental patterns because  most of the cutters originally came to America from Europe. About 1830 American ingenuity and originality began to influence the industry, and a national style began to emerge. This came about the time The United States  was preparing to celebrate her 100th birthday. and what historians term the "Brilliant Period" began. From about 1876 until the advent of World War 1, American cut glass craftsmen excelled all others worldwide, and produced examples of the cut glass art that may never again be equaled.

When American glass manufacturers displayed their cut glass at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, their clear, bright, leaded glass was an immediate sensation. From then on, American cut glass became extremely popular. Most middle-class and wealthy households owned at least a few pieces to grace their elegant holiday tables.

Representatives from eight American glass manufacturers showed off their leaded-crystal goblets, tumblers, decanters, and serving plates at the Exposition. Each of these pieces had been deeply cut by hand on a succession of metal, stone, and wooden wheels. The Brilliant Period lasted from the Centennial celebration until the first decade of the 1900s, when changing tastes and less-expensive pressed glass, which replicated the look of cut glass, pushed the original to the sidelines. In fact, by 1910 manufacturers of the floral, fruit, and geometric patterns in cut glass pressed their pieces first, then cut them, making their pieces less costly to produce.

During the Brilliant Period, over 1,000 cutting shops met the demand. Companies such Dorflinger, Hawkes, Libbey, J. Hoare and Co., T. G. Hawkes, Tuthill, Egginton, and Mt. Washington were highly regarded for the quality of their work, as well as their artistry. 

Some of the most sought-after patterns cut during the American period of cut glass are Wedgemere, Aztec, and Ellsmere by Libbey; Aberdeen by Jewel; Queens, Chrysanthemum, and Nautilus by Hawkes; Assyrian by Sinclaire; Poppy by Tuthill; Wheat by Hoare; and Russian and Comet by several companies. Shapes can also be considered rare, such as tea and coffee pots, table lamps, oil lamps, triple-ring lapidary neck decanters, cake plates, punch bowls, and whiskey bottles.

All glass that’s to be decorated by cutting requires the addition of up to 40 percent lead oxide, a chemical that makes ordinary glass soft enough to cut against moving wheels without shattering. Leaded glass is called "crystal.”

Cutting glass was time consuming. After a worker brought a blank from storage, a designer marked it with outlines of the decoration. The "rougher" began the cutting by holding the blank against a rapidly moving, beveled, metal wheel, kept constantly moistened and cooled by a fine stream of wet sand dripping from an overhanging funnel. He followed the designer's marks, making incisions by pushing the glass down against the wheel. A worker would use various sized wheels to make the many different sized cuts required to complete the design.

Next, the piece went to the "smoother", who went back over all the rough cuts with stone wheels called "craighleiths." The smoother also initially cut some of the small lines on the motifs, as indicated by the design. Finally, the "polisher" finished the piece by polishing each cut with wooden wheels made from willow, cherry or other softwoods. Polishers used rottenstone or pumice with the polishing wheels to give a lustrous appearance to the cut, leaving no imperfections on the gleaming surfaces.

Early in the Brilliant Period, one cutter did all the cutting on a single piece. Since changing wheels to accommodate various sizes and depths of cuts could occupy 60 percent of a cutter's time, manufacturers quickly adapted assembly line methods. By giving each cutter a different sized wheel and by passing a piece from station to station, productivity increased immensely.

Artisans in over 1,000 shops cut hundreds of patterns. Some makers polished glass using wooden wheels while others used acid. Hobstars and fans, strawberry diamonds and flutes, beading and chair caning, are but a few of the motifs that make up American designs. Not all cut glass was of the same quality. While some was excellent, other pieces were just fine, and many were downright inferior. 

Workers cut facets into finished glass pieces by pressing them against a large rotating iron or stone wheel. The nicest pieces of cut glass had a high lead oxide content giving them extra sparkle showing off the exceptional shine of the cutting in this clear glass.

However, as ;the American Brilliant Period progressed, glassmakers turned from hand blowing blanks to blown glass made with molds, and eventually incorporated design elements in the blown mold as well. However, craftsmanship suffered and the overall quality declined.

Manufacturers also changed how they polished pieces, going from hand finishing to a strong acid bath to eliminate sharp edges. This method worked but lacked the same high-quality finish when compared to the earlier handcrafted glass. And to save money and increase profits, decorations became less elaborate, with less swirled cuts and precise points cut into the glass. 

Manufacturers developed and patented stunning new patterns quite unlike earlier European designs. They gave patterns intriguing names, and leading glass houses began advertising campaigns urging collection of whole sets of goblets, tumblers, wine glasses and finger bowls in the new designs. Cutting shops proliferated to meet the demand for fine pieces of cut glass being sought by wealthy American households.

By 1908 less than 100 cut class workshops remained. A number of leading companies continued to maintain their high standards throughout the waning years, attracting the finest designers and most skilled craftsmen, who from 1908 to 1915 produced some of the most elegant patterns of cut glass ever created. 

The outbreak of World War I dealt the final blow. Lead oxide, an essential ingredient in glass made for cutting was needed for the war effort, and by the time the war ended, the few factories that had managed to survive used their resources to produce less costly glass.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Federal America" in the 2026 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Luggage for the Long Haul

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased a vintage trunk. It has no makers mark on the bottom or inside, so I was wondering what year it was made and who made it.

ANSWER: What you have is a flat-top steamer trunk, which from the looks of it, probably dates to between the 1910s and 1920s..

Steamer trunks, which got their name from their storage location on a steamer ship, first appeared in the late 1870s, although most date from between 1880 and 1920. While some had flat tops, those with rounded tops were for those who wanted to try to have their trunk placed  on the top of piles in the baggage compartments, so they wouldn’t be damaged. When people traveled, they did so for longer periods because travel by train, and especially sailing ships or coastal steamers, was slow. 

Steamer trunks generally came in many styles, including the Jenny Lind, Saratoga, monitor, steamer or cabin, barrel-staves, octagon or bevel-top, wardrobe, dome-top, barrel-top, wall trunks, and even full dresser trunks. Since these differing styles only lasted for a decade or two, and—along with their hardware—can be extremely helpful in dating an unmarked trunk.

Trunks generally consisted of a base trunk box made of pine covered with protective and decorative materials. Some of the earliest trunks sported studded hide or leather and looked much like the furniture of the same period since many furniture makers also produced trunks. Later coverings included paper, canvas, plain or embossed tin, with an uncounted assortment of hardware and hardwood slats to hold it down.

There were hundreds of trunk manufacturers in the United States. A few of the larger and well known companies included Rhino Trunk & Case, C.A. Taylor, Haskell Brothers, Martin Maier, Romadka Bros., Goldsmith & Son, Crouch & Fitzgerald, M. M. Secor, Winship, Hartmann, Belber, Oshkosh, Seward, and Leatheroid. One of the largest American manufacturers of trunks was Seward Trunk Company of Petersburg, Virginia. Shwayder Trunk Company of Denver, Colorado later became Samsonite. Another was the English luxury goods manufacturer H.J. Cave trading since 1839. Some of the better known French trunk makers included Louis Vuitton, Goyard, Moynat, and Au Départ.

The easiest way to date any trunk is by examining its style. The Jenny Lind trunk, named after the Swedish singer who toured the United States between 1850 and 1852, had a distinctive hour glass or keyhole shape when viewed from the side.

Saratoga trunks, on the other hand, were the premium trunks of many manufacturers and   encompassed nearly every other style of trunk manufactured before the 1880s. Saratogas had a variety of complex compartments, trays, and heavy duty hardware.

Monitor-tops date from the late 1870s to the late 1910s. They had rounded front and rear corners which formed a lying-down "D" when viewed from the side. Earlier examples usually included labor-intensive hardwood slats while there was a revival much later with rarer, all-metal ones being used.

Steamer trunks, sometimes referred to as flat-tops, first appeared in the late 1870s, although most of them date date from the 1880s to the 1920s. Their flat or slightly curved tops, usually covered in canvas, leather or patterned paper, distinguished them from others. They stood about 14 inches tall to accommodate steamship luggage regulations. Some old catalogs referred to them as "packers," while a "steamer" trunk actually referred to one often called a cabin trunk.

Cabin trunks, often called "true" steamer trunks, were the equivalent of today's carry-on luggage. They were low-profiled and small enough to fit under the berths of trains or in the cabin of a steamer. Manufacturers made them with flat tops and an inner tray compartment to store the owner's valuables deemed too valuable to stow in the baggage  car or ship's hold.

Barrel-staves, made from the late 1870s to the mid-1880s had horizontal instead of vertical slats, giving them a distinctive look.

Bevel-tops, dating from the 1870s to 1900, had a distinct trapezoidal shape when viewed from the side, although the earlier ones usually had a much shorter flattened top section than the later ones.

Wardrobe trunks had to be stood on end to be opened and had drawers on one side and hangers for clothes on the other. Many of the better ones also included buckles/tie-downs for shoes, removable suitcases/briefcases, privacy curtains, mirrors, and makeup boxes. Because of their large size and weight, people used these for extended travel by ship or train.

A dome-top trunk had a high, curved top that could rise up to 25 to 30 inches. Included were camel-backs which had a central, vertically running top slat that was higher than the others, hump-backs which were the same but had no slat in the center of the top, and barrel-tops, which had high arching slats that were all the same height. These trunks date from the 1870s to the 1900s.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Colonial America" in the 2026 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

From Hunting Tools to Folk Art

 

QUESTION: My grandfather was an avid duck hunter. To help him catch his prey, he used decoys. Some of them were rather plain but one was fancier than the rest, painted in full color and detail. Since I always admired them, he left them to me when he passed away last year. I still admire them and would like to know a bit about decoy history. Also, I’d like to possibly add to the ones he left me. 

ANSWER: Collectible decoys run the gamut from fancy ones made by famous carvers to plainer ones made by hunters, themselves. It all depends on how much you can afford to spend and what type of decoy—there are several—you want to add to those from your grandfather. But before you consider purchasing any, it’s a good idea to consider their history.

Long before English colonists arrived in America, Native Americans used natural materials like mud, fowl carcasses, and bulrushes to create imitations of birds for hunting. Later, colonists began to copy this technique. These imitations, or decoys, successfully attracted live birds, which the hunters would then kill or capture.

But the decoys used by Native Americans weren’t the detailed ones known today. Instead, they were approximations of the form and plumage of the type of birds being hunted. Hunters would weave bullrush into the shape of a bird or form a duck out of clay and stretch the skins of previous kills over the form. Often, they would weave feathers into the decoy and painted the heads and necks to match the colors of type of birds being hunted.

When Europeans first colonized North America, wildfowl filled the skies. Unfortunately, early settlers watched the birds fly over but didn’t know how to get them. In Europe, fowling was a sport for the landed gentry. Since ordinary people didn't own land for hunting, they never learned how to do it. Their guns didn't have the range or accuracy to bag high-flying birds, plus they had no bird-dogs to fetch their kill. 

Colonists copied the Native American's hunting technique, placing groups of decoys, called "rigs," in estuaries and marshes to attract birds. They made their decoys in two basic forms—floaters and stickups. Floating decoys attracted swimming gamebirds, such as ducks, gulls, and swans.  

Typically, they carved the bodies from a solid piece of pine or cedar, then hollowed them out to make them lighter to carry. They carved the heads separately and attached them with wooden dowels. Once assembled, they painted the decoys to match the hunted fowl. They added weights to the bottom of each decoy so they would sit low in the water without flipping over. Hunters made stickups in similar fashion, but made them to represent shorebirds such as sandpiper with legs added and pushed into the muddy shore.

During the second half of the 19th century, demand for game birds and their feathers exploded. Railroads enabled the fowl to be shipped quickly to markets. Victorian millinery fashions made heavy use of decorative bird plumage. Manufacturers produced decoys by the thousands to meet the demand. There were no restrictions on hunting, and market hunters collectively killed thousands of birds a day.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, between the United States and Great Britain, acting on behalf of Canada, specifically protected migratory birds being decimated by over-hunting. It made it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds. Plus the statute didn’t discriminate between live or dead birds and/or bird parts including feathers, eggs and nests.

Consequently, hunters had little need for thousands of decoys. In 1928, the U.S. Congress banned the hunting of shorebirds  Decoy carvers could still make and sell their products anywhere, but there was little need for them. By the 1950s, mass-produced plastic decoys eliminated the need for hand-carved decoys. And by 1960, hand-carved hunting decoys had become a tool of the past. Decoy carving had instead become a folk art. Many hunters discarded or burned their wooden decoys, which at the time seemed worthless. 

To make a decoy, a carver would form the general shape of the decoy’s body using a hatchet and then fine-tune it with a long drawknife. He or she—a few carvers enlisted the help of their wives—would create the head separately from a smaller block of wood using an axe, rather than a hatchet. Then the carver would whittle the head down with a jackknife and attach it to the body using nails or long spikes.

Finally, the carver would sand, prime, and paint the finished decoy in natural colors to lure fowl effectively. By the time of the Civil War, this technique had matured almost to an art form.

While carvers produced different species of decoys—duck, geese, shorebirds, and more, shorebird decoys tend to be more scarce.

Commercial hunters often owned hundreds of decoys, which they would set out in large numbers to attract as many birds as possible. As sport hunting became more prominent among the wealthy, some carvers began making fewer decoys but of higher quality for this new clientele. Sport hunters wanted decoys that were beautiful, not just useful. Eventually, some carvers began making decoys for purely decorative reasons.

Decoys varied in style from region to region, as the environment and species of a given area dictated their design. Decoys in Maine, for example, were often tougher and more rugged in order to withstand the rough waters of the area. Even within regions, decoy designs varied. Some makers built theirs to float, which would attract large fowl like ducks and geese. 

Another group of decoys included stationary “stickups,” which stood on legs in the ground. Still others were two-dimensional profiles also designed as stickups. Some of these stickups stood nearly four feet tall, and floating decoys could be just as long.

Duck decoys weren’t seen as collectors’ items until the 1960s. The market first started with small, niche groups of enthusiasts throughout the United States in the 1950s and 1960s who began collecting antique duck decoys. When Hal Sorenson of Burlington, Iowa, published a magazine called “The Decoy Collector’s Guide,” everything began to change.

Unusual poses (sleeping, swimming, and feeding) are more difficult to render. Such decoys are generally more valuable.

The list of carvers seemed endless, but some names stood out above the rest. Perhaps the most famous practitioner was Elmer Crowel, a masterful carver and painter who lived in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His decoys generally had carved wings and glass eyes, and he often used a rasp to imitate feathers on the back of his decoys’ heads and on their breasts. In 2000, a preening Canada goose that he carved sold at an auction for $684,500, the current world record for a decoy.

Other notable carvers included Lathrop T. Holmes, who used a limited but expressive palette of colors. “Gus” Wilson’s attention to detail was almost unrivaled, while many of the approximately 10,000 decoys in 50 years made by the Ward Brothers of Maryland were purely decorative. Charles Perdew and his wife, Edna, were a team—he carved and she painted. And Ken Anger perfected the technique of using a rasp to make his decoys look soft and realistic.

In addition to hand-carved decoys, some of the high-quality decoys produced in late-19th-century factories are also highly collectible. The main factories included Mason, Victor, Dodge, Stevens, Peterson, Evans, and Reynolds. Most of these factories used either a duplicating lathe, an assembly line, or both.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 50,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Colonial America" in the 2026 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.