Country Furniture with a Folksy Flair

 

QUESTION: I recently attended an auction in central Pennsylvania. Included in the many lots were several pieces of attractively painted furniture. I was particularly drawn to a couple of what I thought were blanket chests, decorated with folk art motifs. But when they came up for bid, the auctioneer called them bridal chests. I’d like to know more about type of painted furniture. What is the origin of folk-art painted furniture? 

ANSWER: Handpainted folk art furniture was highly influenced by cultural traditions brought to America by immigrants. 

The peak of handcrafted folk art painted furniture ran from the 1790s to the 1880s. There weren’t any real art schools and not all that many fine artists in the early 19th century. Many talented individuals became commercial painters and worked with special skill on furniture, signs and other useful objects.

From the 1870s on, Mennonites from Poland, Russia and Prussia settled in the Dakotas and Nebraska, bringing their tradition of grain painting on light wood with them. The Mennonites decorated large wardrobes, dowry chests, tables and sofas with these patterns, and also embellished furniture with small floral motifs from the old country.

English cabinetmakers who settled in many parts of the country helped spread the style for painted English neoclassical chairs based on the designs of George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton.

But the do-it-yourself idea, too, started early in the 19th century when young girls learned how to paint furniture and wooden boxes with watercolors. Cabinetmakers varnished the decorated pieces which featured landscapes, figures, fruits, animals, and flowers.

Itinerant painters and craftsmen lent their artistic expertise to the production of painted furniture pieces such as chairs, settees, armoires, cabinets, chests, benches, and other functional pieces. Many of these were European emigrants who brought many distinct regional styles and art forms to America.

By the early 20th Century, painted furniture began to have an impact on American culture and design. Classified as folk art or peasant art, these painted pieces became especially popular.

German immigrants used furniture painted in the German folk style, such as chairs, storage chests, tables, schranks, dressers, benches, and trunks. German folk furniture was utility-based, simple country furniture that remained significantly less influenced by the national and international design trends. Painter decorators drew inspiration from local tastes, preferences, history, culture, traditions, and heritage. Folk furniture was handmade using elaborate joints, often involving painting and carving to depict animals, scenes of daily life, geometric shapes, bears, and birds. Furniture makers used locally available woods like spruce, pine, beech, oak, birch, ash, and maple.

As elsewhere in Europe, national and international art trends targeted the wealthy. However, some elements filtered down to the provincial regions, influencing the works, skills, and tastes of local artisans. Since Germany had abundant forests, local artisans used a variety of woods to produce unique furniture.

Most of these pieces were distinctive of a particular region and period. Since Germany had a long and complicated history, the style and design of German folk furniture items varied depending on a piece's period and area of origin.

With the advent of the Renaissance in the early 16th-century, most European nations saw significant changes in the design and style of furniture. However, the cabinetmakers of provincial Germany remained largely unaffected by the Renaissance, producing unique Gothic-style furniture.

The Renaissance brought new forms of furniture, including the bridal trunk. Bridal trunks became a standard throughout Europe. The provincial German population would often personalized these bridal trunks with hand-painted designs.

Today, thanks to the popularity of painted furniture in antiques stores and the American trend for relocation, a piece from one section of the country may turn up in another.

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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "In the Good Ole Summertime" in the 2024 Summer 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.

A Silver Alternative

 

QUESTION: As I was browsing a weekly flea market, I came upon a curious silver vase—at least I thought it was silver. But when I picked it up, it felt like glass and was much lighter than silver. The dealer said it was Mercury glass. I never heard of such a thing. Can you tell me more about it?

ANSWER: As the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, the growing middle class wanted inexpensive alternatives to the silver objects owned by the wealthy. One of those alternatives was Mercury glass, first made as an inexpensive silver substitute. Soon it evolved into an art form of its own.

First produced in the late 18th century, Mercury glass was a handblown, double-walled glass with an interior coating of silver-colored metal compounds. It took many forms, including candlesticks, compotes, candy dishes, plates, goblets, wig stands, curtain tiebacks, and doorknobs. Some critics condemned it for looking too much like mirrored glass and too little like silver, which was what people liked about it.

Produced originally from around 1840 until around 1930 in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, and Germany, it spread to England in 1849 when Edward Varnish and Frederick Hale Thomson patented the technique for silvering glass vessels, and continued to be made there until 1855.

Mercury glass, also known as silvered glass, contains neither mercury nor silver. It's actually clear glass, mold-blown into double-walled shapes and coated on the inside with a silvering solution containing silver nitrate and grape sugar, heated, then closed. Sealing methods included metal discs covered with a glass round in England, or a cork inserted into the unpolished pontil scar on the bottom in America. In the beginning a few Bohemian makers tried to line their pieces with a mercury solution, but they stopped using it due to expense and toxicity. However, this is where the name originated.

Companies in the United States, including the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, New England Glass Company Union Glass Company, and the Boston Silver Glass Company, made silvered glass from about 1852 to 1880. The New England Glass Company displayed a variety of silvered glass articles, including copper wheel engraved goblets, vases and other tableware at the 1853 New Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Bohemian Mercury glassmakers decorated their pieces with a variety of techniques including painting, enameling, etching, and surface engraving. Antique historians believe it to be the first true "art glass"---glass made for display and for its artistic value rather than for everyday use.

The peak of Mercury glass’ popularity came in the mid-19th century. Back then, high-quality European and American-made pieces were lightweight, had graceful forms, and came decorated with acid-etched fruit or floral motifs, cut glass designs, and sometimes paint. Young girls, working on assembly lines, painted vases in particular with their own designs of swans, daisies, or leaves. Makers intended the details on their pieces to be equal to the finest decoration on other forms of glass and china.

After briefly falling out of favor, Mercury glass reappeared around 1900 in the form of Christmas ornaments and gazing balls, as well as blown fruits and flowers. Today, most serious collectors concentrate on antique forms, like curtain pins, salt cellars, or pedestal-footed silvered vases.

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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Art Deco World" in the 2024 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 First Non-Stick Lining for Cookware

 

QUESTION: I have been fascinated with antiques enamel kitchenware since I was in my twenties. Over the years, I’ve purchased a number of pieces at flea markets and antique cooperatives. However, I bought them because I liked them. I know very little about this enamelware. When did it first appear? Why did manufacturers decide to make this type of cookware?

ANSWER: Today, we take pots and pans with non-stick surfaces for granted. With the invention of Teflon, the problem seemed to be solved. But people soon discovered that even Teflon had its drawbacks. Over time, many cooks discovered that enamel-lined cookware works even better than Teflon. But the use of enamel cookware isn’t new. In fact, it goes all the way back to Germany in the 1760s.

The original reason for the invention of enamel-lined cookware had nothing to do with its non-stick abilities. Back then, people wanted a a way of coating iron to stop the taste  of metal or rust getting into their food. Cookware manufacturers looked for something acid-resistant and easy to clean without laborious scouring, something more durable than the tin linings used inside copper.

Enamel was an expensive adornment material for jewelry and pottery from the ancient Egyptians to the Chinese and Anatolians and to the British.

Often called porcelain when used on cookware, enamel was a coating material in the form of powdered glass. Fired at very high heat in a kiln, this powdered glass melted, flowed and finally hardened on any surface that could withstand the process. 

Craftspersons applied the fusing of the glass layer by layer, applying the design via a ceramic decal, permanently sealing it as a result of being fired at such high temperatures. The final result was a smooth and durable porcelain veneer decorated with artwork that would never peel. 

The use of vitreous enamel on cast iron sinks and bathtubs goes back to the 1850s and the Industrial Revolution.

Craftspeople in the mid 19th century were already searching for a material that would enable a cooking surface that wouldn't rust and leach harmful substances into the food. By applying enamel to the inside of cast iron pots and pans, they created the first non-stick surface ideal for baking, cooking, and tableware to safely maintain the taste of their food. 

From the late 19th century on, cookware manufacturers began to apply enamel to steel instead of cast iron. Enamel kitchenware stamped from thin sheets of steel appeared in every household as pans, pots, kettles, baking dishes, ladles, cups, bowls, plates, and biscuit cutters, becoming primary kitchenware. 

This new cookware was not only easier to clean and scratch-proof but also lighter in weight. As an incredibly durable material, enamelware became popular because it was less fragile than china.

White was a standard color on enamelware since that gave plates, mugs, ladles, and coffee pots a bright, sanitary appearance. Cookware maker trimmed the rims of lightweight steel enamelware with a solid band of red or blue, while enameled cast iron, designed for the stovetop and oven, was usually white on the inside but colored on the exterior.

Graniteware was a variation of lightweight enamelware that had a speckled surface—white on brownish-red and other colors. Patented in 1848 by New York inventor Charles Stumer, graniteware—also known as agateware and speckleware—enjoyed a long run in the United States, filling kitchen shelves and cabinets from the 1870s until the end of World War II.

U.S. manufacturers of graniteware included the St. Louis Stamping Company, which marketed its products under the Granite Iron Ware brand, Lalance and Grosjean, whose Peerless Gray Ware was sold by Sears, Roebuck and Company, the Bellaire Stamping Company, and Vollrath. 

The 1870s witnessed an emergence of innovation in American kitchenware. Previously used only in the manufacture of pots and pans, enamel came to be used in a variety of items and decorations, from speckled to spattered. 

Migrants from France and Germany founded the first two US companies making enamel cookwares in the 1860s. Lalance and Grosjean, whose founders emigrated from France, started as a business importing sheet metal and metal cookware before setting up their Manufacturing Company in New York, with a metal stamping factory in Woodhaven. They called their mottled enamel agateware which was typically blue.

German immigrants Frederick and William Niedringhaus built up the St. Louis Stamping Co. in Missouri, then moved graniteware production to Granite City, Illinois.  They later evolved into NESCO, whose grey enamel was sometimes said to flow from "pure melted granite." They got the first US patent for a mottled enamel finish, just a few months before a competing patent by L & G. Both companies went on to patent numerous improvements, from better spouts to novel surface decoration.

The best-known brands of granite and agate wares sold for higher prices  In 1899 Lalance and Grosjean’s agate nickel-steel ware” cost more than Haberman’s “grey mottled enameled ware.”  From the 1890s onward, L&Gs agate ware came with a “chemist’s certificate,’ proving it free of “arsenic, antimony, and lead.” L&G's two-quart lipped saucepan cost 18¢ while Haberman's sold for 7¢. Meanwhile, Sears had a set of 17 pieces of "Peerless gray enamel ware" selling for about $2.70.

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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The  Vernacular Style" in the 2024 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.

Beauty and Strength from Paper

 

QUESTION: When I think of papier-maché, I remember my days in school art classes soaking strips of paper in a mixture of flour and water from which I made a variety of shapes, including puppet heads and fruit, and weird sculptures. But I just saw some rather elegant objects made of papier-maché at a recent antique show. These looked nothing like my crude art class creations. How did they get papier-maché to look so good? And are these objects worth collecting?

ANSWER: During the early 19th century, every household had a least one useful object made of papier-maché.

The Chinese invented papier-maché soon after they invented paper in the second century. In Europe the industry developed in France in the 1650s with small decorative objects, such as boxes made of used paper gathered during the night by billboard strippers. By the early 1760s, Germany had its first papier-maché factory. Russia gained world renown for its lovely hand-painted papier-maché boxes, decorated with landscapes, peasants and scenes taken from Russian folklore.

The term papier-maché is French and means crushed paper. Papier-maché consists of several layers of thick damp paper and vegetable matter pressed together into sheets in an iron mold and then oven dried. After workers took it out of the mold, they coated it with multiple coats of varnish—a process called “japanning,” thus waterproofing it and making it ready for decoration. After artists decorated the item, they applied a final coat of clear varnish to protect it.

In England the papier-maché industry quickly followed the introduction of paper making around 1690. At first people used the pulped paper for interior decoration and architectural ornaments because it was a less expensive than other building materials. Then they applied it to picture and looking glass frames and small ornamental moldings. By 1766, John Taylor of Birmingham had begun to make buttons and snuff boxes.

In 1772 Henry Clay, also of Birmingham, patented a process for making heat-resistant, hand-smoothed panels of papier-maché. These stronger panels could be sewn and dovetailed just like real wood and were perfect for making furniture. 

In 1816, Aaron Jennens and T.H. Bettridge purchased Clay’s factory, which had become the top producer of high quality papier-maché. Jennens developed a technique in which panels could be softened with steam to enable manipulation into a heated metal mold. Workers then screwed a counter mold into position and heat-dried the steam-molded panels. The result was a hard, pre-shaped product of even thickness. By reducing the number of steps and the amount of time required to mold furniture, Jennens revolutionized the process and opened the door to mass-production.

Jennens and Bettridge expanded the traditional repertoire of salvers and snuff boxes to  produce papier-maché household furnishings on a larger scale for the English Victorian home.

One of the earliest and most popular papier-maché items was the snuff box. The habit of taking snuff began in England in the 17th century and by the beginning of the 18th century over 7,000 shops in London sold snuff.

Papier-maché was an ideal material for snuff boxes because it was cheap and maintained the snuff at the correct humidity. The earliest boxes had no rim, but makers added them later, making a frame for the decoration. They were rectangular or circular in shape, and many snuff  boxes had hand-painted ' decoration, usually scenes from famous paintings. Top quality ones came from the workshops of Samuel Raven, who signed most of his work on the inside of the lid.

By the late 18th century, papier-maché trays had become popular. Before long, middle class families didn’t think their homes were complete without a nest of papier-maché trays. Jennens and Bettridge presented a set of three elaborately decorated trays to Queen Victoria on her marriage to Albert in 1840.

The great interest in papier-maché trays resulted in the development of new shapes with a variety of elaborate designs. Shapes were rectangular, octagonal, oval and a form called Gothic. One variety of the Gothic, known as the "parlor maid tray," had one side curved to fit the maid’s waist for support when the tray was heavily laden with tea service items. George Wallis of the Old Hall Works at Wolverhampton created an oval scalloped tray which he called the "Victoria" in honor of the young queen.

Letter writing was of great social importance during the Victorian period, and a complete set of writing materials was provided in the guest rooms of wealthy homes, often made of papier-maché. Lap desks were popular with Victorian ladies. The writing board lifted up to expose stationery and compartments for ink bottles, pen and postage stamps. When the user closed the beautifully decorated cover, the compact lap desk could be kept anywhere as a decorative piece.

Inkstands were also frequently made of papier-maché. They usually had a box for sealing wax placed between two crystal ink bottles with a slot for pens in front. Other papier-maché items used for letter writing were blotters, desk-folio's and letter racks.

True lacquer comes from the resin of a tree of the sumac family indigenous to the Orient, and in the Far East this resin dries quickly upon exposure to sunlight. Since the lacquer didn’t set properly in the wet English climate, its effect had to be duplicated by various varnishes in a process referred to as "japanning."

Japanning is a British imitation of Oriental lacquer, pioneered by Henry Clay. He dissolved resin  in alcohol, then added sizing from boiled parchment along with a whitening material. He applied this to a wooden base, then polished and decorated the surface..

From the beginning, makers of papier-maché housewares japanned them.  At first the decoration was simple, with a black or red ground embellished with a guilt border. But in the 1790's, they began to decorate the entire surface. Not surprisingly, Chinese scenes were popular.   

During its early days, makers of papier-maché items decorated them with metal powders and alloys, applying them with a swab, rather than a brush. Typically, most pieces have a painted floral decoration on a black ground, a characteristic look of Victorian papier-mâché, 

Jennens and Bettridge changed the way they decorated their papier-maché, especially with the extensive use of mother-of-pearl as an in-lay material. Inlaid mother-of-pearl then became the most popular method of decorating papier-maché items, along with painting and gliding.

Manufacturers used landscapes, flower designs, animals, and insects to decorate their pieces. Geometric motifs were also very popular. Artists hand-painted miniature portraits and pictures of castles and famous buildings on some pieces of papier-maché, especially small snuff boxes.

Decorations varied almost as much as the many articles made from papier-maché. Although manufacturers of papier-maché items usually japanned them, some items had green, red or yellow backgrounds. 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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The  Vernacular Style" in the 2024 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.

Who's for a Game of Cards?

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing though an antique shop, I came across two tables. Both had fold-over tops. One seemed like it was from the 18th century, the other from the Empire period of the 19th. The dealer unfolded the top of the older table to reveal a green felt cloth inlaid into it. He said that this was a card table. When he unfolded the top of the second table, it had no felt inlay and was plainly finished. He told me the second table was a tea table. I always thought they were both card tables. Can you tell me the difference and when card tables started to be used?

ANSWER: There’s a difference between the two tables, although subtle. Back in the 18th century, furniture was expensive as each piece was handcrafted to suit the customer. People woud have used their card tables as tea tables by just putting a tablescloth over it. But by the 1840s, furniture had begun to be at least partially machine-made, and manufacturers kept the cost down by making card tables plainer. 

Playing cards were probably invented during the Chinese Tang Dynasty around the 9th century as a result of the usage of woodblock printing. Playing cards became a diversion both in public houses and private homes. Early playing cards had neither suits nor numbers. Instead, they had instructions or forfeits for whoever drew them. Usually, playing cards revolved around drinking alcohol, especially in the public houses.

The earliest game involving cards occurred on July 17,1294 when the Ming Department of Punishments caught two gamblers, Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog, playing with paper cards. The Department confiscated the wood blocks used for printing the cards together with nine of the actual cards. By the 11th century, playing cards had spread throughout Asia and eventually made their way to Egypt. Playing cards probably came to Europe from the East, arriving first in either Italy or Spain.

By the early 18th century, specially made tables for playing cards began to appear all over England. The first card tables first appeared in the American Colonies around 1710. Card tables became symbols of wealth and the consequent expansion of leisure time and soon became a social necessity in every fashionable home. Without modern entertainment devices, about the only forms of evening entertainment was playing music, dancing, and of course, playing cards. 

Cabinetmakers constructed most of these imported English card tables of mahogany or walnut. Each had a hinged two-leaf top that, when open and supported on a swing leg, revealed an inner surface lined with leather, felt, or the coarse woolen cloth called baize. Since household lighting was usually inadequate for evening play, most of the tables had four turrets projecting from the corners to accommodate candlesticks. In addition, there were often “guinea pools” or “fishponds”—shallow dishlike depressions to hold money, dice, or counters—and, in Chippendale styles, a single drawer in which to keep the cards. The tables stood on graceful cabriole legs, meant to resemble a woman’s shapely calves, but their backs, unseen against the wall, remained unfinished.

Since so many of these tables were highly decorative and also bore their makers’ marks, they provide valuable evidence of the varieties of carving, inlay, veneer, and other detail used by the cabinetmakers, as well as of regional characteristics. Tables with bowed fronts were popular in Boston and Salem, and five- and six-legged examples appeared in New York.

Some people used card tables for purposes other than for playing cards. Unfortunately, tablecloths only covered over the fishponds, often causing accidents and breakage.

In Puritan New England and Quaker Philadelphia, as well as in the South, people bet huge sums on cockfights and horse races, on bull and bearbaiting. Doctors and lawyers would wager their fees at the card table, and the “devil’s prayer book”—a deck of playing cards—could be found everywhere.

From the beginning of the United States, gambling overpowered every effort to restrain it. By the late 18th century every fashionable home had a card table. Still, most households reserved the card table for recreational use.

In the upper-class 18th-century American home, ladies played cards at afternoon tea parties where guests might win or lose hundreds of dollars. In the evening, families would summon servants to bring the card table into the center of the drawing room after dinner, as card playing was a primary form of evening entertainment. Players became embroiled in spirited games of whist, a simpler foreunner of bridge, pokerlike brag, quadrille, or any of the several other games while spectators observed the action. 

When not in use, card tables in most households remained folded away to become consoles or side tables. Servants set card tables against the wall when not in use, sometimes with the upper half raised as a kind of ornamental backsplash.

After about 1840, card tables began to lose the felt inlaid on their surface. People still played cards but now these tables came into popular use as tea tables. With a smooth top, minus the fishponds and candlestick rests—indoor lighting had been much improved—it was now possible to place a tablecloth over the table without the fear of anything toppling due to the former depressions. In many cases, these table featured graceful rounded corners and were still being made of mahogany or walnut.

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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday 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 Descendant of the Laptop

 

QUESTION: On one of my first trips to England, I enjoyed antiquing as I traveled the countryside. In a shop in the Cotswolds, I discovered an unusual box. It had a lid that opened a out into what looked like a sloping writing service. The dealer said it was a 19th-century writing box. This seemed odd to me as many people now do whatever correspondence they need to do on their laptop through Emails or by texting on their smartphone. When and where did these boxes originate and how long were they in use?

ANSWER: While most writing boxes date to the 19th century, they go back even further than that. Victorians carried these boxes with them on trips so they could write letters and postcards back home. When not traveling, many also used them in place of a desk. Essentially, they were the laptops of their day.

Writing boxes date back to the beginning of writing. During the Middle Ages, monks kept their writing materials in special boxes called scriptoriums. Eventually, they mounted these boxes on stands and later added  legs, creating the first desks for doing illuminated manuscripts. But the writing box, itself, survived into the early 20th century.

People used traveling desks or writing boxes throughout the 19th century. When opened, they offered a leathered or velvet slope and rested on a table or over compartments for holding stationery. More luxurious versions included a removable pen tray under which spare nibs and holders could be kept, and screw-top inkwells, usually of glass, on each side. Others offered secret drawers or compartments. 

Before usernames and passwords, professional men kept their valuable documents—deeds, ills, and private letters—in their writing boxes. They didn’t keep these at their desks and always kept them locked. The first writing-boxes like these were descendant from “bible-boxes” and came into being in the 1600s. 

During the second half of the 17th century, craftsmen began to make improvements to these the Bible box, creating a rectangular box with a sloping lid. Such boxes provided a ‘desk on the move’ for such people as merchants, members of the clergy and professional men of the turn of the 18th century. 

In the 18th century, drivers stacked squarish trunks and boxes on the backs of stagecoaches and carriages. A box with a slopping lid didn’t fit this arrangement, forcing passengers to carry it on their lap. 

Eventually, a creative cabinetmaker discovered that if he sliced a rectangle in half, diagonally, and moved the cutting-line so that it was slightly off, when he applied this to a box, he found  when the lid was opened and laid down flat, a complete, compact writing-slope could be created for anyone who wanted to use it. When business was done, the slope was simply folded up into a neat little box. This became the basic form of the writing box for the next 200 years.

Once the form of the writing box became standardized, it became quite common. Their practicality and portability allowed them to be carried on journeys, on long sea-voyages, on military campaigns, scientific and geographic expeditions and even for a trip out of town to visit the Duke for the weekend shooting-party. It was during this time that writing boxes became fine pieces of craftsmanship, handmade by cabinetmakers, carpenters and skilled artisans. They ranged from sturdy, utilitarian pieces with brass-edgings to protect the wooden corners from damage to fine top-of-the line models with inlaid decoration, brass handles, leather writing slopes and plenty of secret compartments.

Writing boxes carried everything a person needed to do business. Most people, however, used them for correspondence. Most included seals and sealing-wax, stamps, a couple of envelopes, notepaper, nibs or quills and a pen-shaft. All writing-boxes also had a dedicated slot or alcove where a sealed inkwell would sit. 

An essential part of any writing box was the glass ink bottles. Before fountain pens appeared around 1895, a dip-pen and inkwell was the only way to go. Before you could get ink that was bottled in safe, screw-top, leakproof bottles, a travelling inkwell, which had a lid that locked securely and a rubber or leather seal to prevent leakage, was the only ink supply you were likely to get. And with the dip-pen shaft came the little box of nibs or ‘pens’ as they were called then, that went with it. 

Their practicality and portability allowed them to be carried on journeys, on long sea voyages, on military campaigns, as well as scientific and geographic expeditions. 

Towards the middle of the 19th century, manufacturers produced wooden writing boxes in enormous quantities to meet a growing demand. They came in all sizes and varieties of wood, including mahogany, burr walnut, rosewood and the more expensive ones in Coromandel wood. Less expensive ones, usually made of thin pine or fruitwood, were a step above an elaborate school pencil box and often decorated with cheaper decals instead of inlay.. 

Makers produced each to various specifications, depending on the intended type and amount of use. An army officer posted to the northwest frontier, for example, would want one robustly built, heavily brass bound, with brass mounted corners and edges to withstand rough treatment. A Victorian lady, on the other hand, might have one made in Tunbridge ware (a type of English marquetry decoration from the spa town of Tunbridge Wells, England) or even papier mache. The more expensive ones had serpentine lids, sometimes inlaid with intricate designs in brass or a mother of pearl or a shield for the owner's initials.

Simpler tourist writing cases in Moroccan leather and lined with satin came equipped with different sizes of stationery, pens, pencils, and a paperknife, but not an inkwell.

The utility of an easily portable box to provide storage for writing materials and a surface on which to write eventually led to the continuing usage of a smaller and more compact box that became very popular in the late 18th century. Known as lap desks or writing slopes, these writing boxes were quite portable, so they could be held on a lap or used at a table. They came with lids, hinged at the front, that slanted upwards towards the back, opening to form a writing surface with only one compartment underneath for storage. 

Before the days of central heating, members of the family could gather by the fire and each work at his own small desk. A lap desk provided each individual with a private place in which to keep letters, paper and writing materials. In those days, ink, quills, paper, sand, wax wafers, and seals were all necessary equipment to use in writing a letter. 

The writing box enjoyed its greatest popularity in days when ladies and gentlemen kept detailed diaries and wrote many letters. Imagine a romantic novelist or poet using just such a box while working in the warmth of a cozy fire. Today, cell phones, laptops, and tablets have made writing boxes and even stationery obsolete. However, as decorative boxes, they're more sought after than ever.

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 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Fall 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.