Sweet Tooth Santas

 

QUESTION: I found this old-world German Santa candy container in an antique shop a couple of months ago. He’s made of papier mache  and stands about 6 inches tall. He’s wearing a cone-shaped hat and carries a small Christmas tree. A faint stamp on the bottom says “Made in Germany.” This little Santa comes apart in the middle to reveal a lined interior. Can you tell me more about this little gem?

ANSWER: You have indeed discovered a little Christmas gem. What you have is a Santa candy container made in Germany around the turn-of-the-20th-century. Called a Springhead, this little novelty features a Santa wearing a red-flocked coat and a cone-shaped hat. He also carries a small Christmas tree decorated with colored beads.

Of all the holiday decorations produced since the mid-19th century, few remain as cherished as early German Santa Claus candy containers. These handmade characterizations of Father Christmas remain a popular collectible.                           

The manufacture of Santa candy containers began in the 1880s. Makers sold them to an eager American market. By the end of the decade, U.S. retailers offered their customers German-made Santas in a variety of sizes and styles.   

Selling for a mere five cents, these Santas represented old Kris Kringle in snow-covered garb. Sometimes makers added gold tinsel to represent sparkling snow. Santa containers came in a variety of sizes, from five to seven-and-a-half inches tall. Santa, himself, had a finely painted red face and white beard and wore a heavy coat. Other Santas wore felt robes trimmed with lamb's wool or felt. Purple crepe paper sometimes lined the inside of the outfit. Some of the Santas carry a tiny wicker basket at their waist or on their back.

The Germans couldn't make them fast enough. The making of these early candy containers involved eight to ten families, each responsible for different areas of production. One family might fashion the boots, another would create Santa's clothing, while another would add Santa's rabbit-fur beard. But the most important step involved painting the face.

Over the years the details of Santa’s face changed. One of the biggest influences was the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” that portrayed Santa as a jolly old elf with a thick, flowing white beard and a white fur-trimmed suit. The public's impression of Father Christmas as a stern, thin old man changed dramatically in the late 19th century when Thomas Nast began illustrating St. Nick as a fat, jolly elf-like character for Harper's Weekly.

People originally saw St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, as a gift-giving old man who rode a white horse and gave goodies to children. Father Christmas took the initial image of St. Nicholas and gave it a twist, making him an old bearded man who doled out punishments as well as rewards.

Residents of certain parts of Germany saw Christkindchen, the German Christ child, as a gift giver. The English butchered the pronunciation of the name, so that today he’s popularly known as Kris Kringle. This figure traditionally wore a white robe and a white jeweled crown, traveling the countryside on a mule. He was said to have been accompanied by Pelze Nicol, a boy with a blackened face. Yet even Pelze Nicol developed into his own personality, becoming Belsnickle, a sinister-looking Santa who punished bad children.

Important scientific discoveries have also been incorporated into these Christmas figures, the most notable being the invention of the light bulb. Between1907 and 1910, the Germans made Santa candy containers featuring an electric lantern strapped to Santa's chest. The figure also held a feather tree decorated with three electric bulbs. A battery operated all four lights.

Likewise, Santa's means of transportation hasn't remained static over the years. Some candy containers show Santa on a sheep, donkey or mule, while others had him riding a sleigh made of moss. The Germans crafted log sleighs with the bed of the sleigh large enough to hold both candy and small wooden toys known as Ergebirge.

Where makers placed the candy and dried fruit and how they made them accessible varied from one container to another. Santas also carried different types of baskets. Some simply had a cloth or felt bag for goodies. Some candy containers came in two pieces, having removable heads or a cardboard tube that separated when Santa's legs and torso, enabling them to be pulled apart. Other examples, such as those showing Santa on a chimney, had a plug on the bottom or a paper seal.

Regardless of the type, people gave Santa candy containers mostly as gifts. After the receiver ate the  candy, they used the container as a holiday decoration. Even though people brought out these Santas for the holidays each year, they could be easily damaged not only by overzealous children allowed to play with the Santas, but also by prolonged exposure to sunlight. While children might physically destroy the candy container, the sun did consider-able harm by fading bright-red coats to a light-brown or turning the interior of the garment from purple to blue.

What destroyed the great artistry of German candy containers, however, was competition from foreign countries. By the 1920s the public was more willing to accept plainer-looking Santas, and the Japanese provided them. Although the Japanese based their candy containers on German examples, the fine details soon became too expensive to produce. The public accepted cheaper imitations, trading savings for a loss in quality.

It's that loss of true artistry over the years that makes vintage German-made Santa candy containers so collectible today. Prices begin at about $375 but rarer ones often sell for several thousand dollars.

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 "Return to Toyland" in the 2024 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.

Collecting Antique Furniture for Beginners

 

QUESTION: I really admire the workmanship and beauty of antique furniture, but I live on a budget, so collecting it seems to be out of my reach. How can I start purchasing antique furniture to begin my collection?

ANSWER: Even though you’re on a budget, it’s still possible to buy some antiques. The place not to start is in antiques stores and shows. Instead, search out consignment and thrift shops for pieces from the late 19th to early 20th century. And since the legal definition of an antique is an object that is at least 100 years old, that means that furniture dating to the early 1920s falls within the antique realm.

Another place to search for pieces is in used furniture stores. While there are fewer of them today, it’s still possible to find one or two. Look for pieces that can be used or repurposed to fit into today’s lifestyle without changing them significantly.

If you’re a beginning collector interested in antique furniture, the old saying holds true: "Buy what you like and can live with, buy the very best you can afford, buy from reputable dealers with experience, and if you do all these things your investment will continue to appreciate."

Antique furniture covers a wide range of types, designs, historical periods and styles—American, English, Continental (German and French) and Asian. All have their following, and within each of these classifications are sub-classifications indicating both style and historical period. Practically, antique furniture can be considered as English, European, American, and Chinese.

Wood type-mahogany, walnut, oak and pin predominate—significantly affects value in antique furniture. The type of furniture, practicality, hardware and construction details are also important in determining value as is the originality of all the composite parts. Many pieces of antique furniture have replacement panels or have had hardware added due to breakage. This lowers the value of a piece considerably. Also, many owners of antique furniture use lemon oil under the misguided belief that it helps preserve the wood and therefore enhances its value. This can’t be farther from the truth. All lemon oil does is dry out the wood, darken the patina, and decrease a piece’s value. The only polish that should be used is pure beeswax. Before purchasing a piece of antique furniture, rub it to see if an oily film is left on your hand.

Begin by purchasing small pieces, gradually building up to larger more expensive—and thus more valuable—pieces as you expand your collection and your budget. While antique furniture made before 1830 should be purchased with its original patina. However, it’s acceptable to buy Victorian and later pieces with their finishes cleaned or restored. Some furniture styles, like Biedermeier from Austria, actually increase in value once they are restored.

But most antique furniture collectors don’t buy for investment potential alone. Most pieces can still be used, so buying a piece of furniture that will not only fit into your decor but will have some use adds to its enjoyment. And while a few collectors purchase furniture from a particular period, most mix styles and periods based on their personal interest. To help varied pieces fit better together in the same room, you should try to use similar wood tones.

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.

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.

Understanding Fraktur

 

QUESTION: I live outside Philadelphia. About 45 minutes further west lies what the locals call “Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” a landscape filled with Amish farms. Browsing antique shops in the area, I often see elaborately decorated documents called fraktur. I understand these recorded births and deaths but would like to know about their origins.

ANSWER: Fraktur was a highly artistic and elaborate illuminated folk art that originated in Germany in the 18th century. Named for the Fraktur script associated with it, it reached its peak between 1740 and 1860.

Laws in what’s now Germany dictated that all vital statistics on a citizen be recorded, and the art of fraktur began as means by which people could document and preserve important family information.

This form of folk illumination was already a well-established tradition in Alsace and other parts of the Rhineland where it took the form of a Taufschein, a short greeting in verse with illumination recalling the baptism of a child and with only an oblique reference to time and place of the baptism. Its chief purpose was not to record baptism but to convey the wishes of the godparents who sponsored the child.

But Taufschein created later in Pennsylvania had another purpose. It was a formal record of birth as well as of the infant’s baptism. In a land where there was as yet no bureau of vital statistics this certificate became a legal document.. 

Fraktur styles were diverse and varied dramatically between artists. Some fraktur were extravagant documents that draw attention to an artist’s expert skill while others were simple drawings that contained little artistic flair. Most fraktur often had religious themes, though some did have secular ones. Men wrote most fraktur in German text, although they used English text on all types of fraktur after the early 1820s. . 

While Pennsylvania Germans created most fraktur for record keeping, they also made them just for fun. Some schoolmasters created drawings as rewards of merit for their students. Others were simply decorative pieces. Regardless of purpose, fraktur was a personal art that was extremely popular with 19th century rural families of Pennsylvania.

The first Fraktur typeface arose in the early 16th century, when Emperor Maximilian I commissioned the design of the Triumphal Arch woodcut by Albrecht Dürer and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose, designed by Hieronymus Andreae.

The name Fraktur came from the Latin fractus, meaning “broken.” It was a blackletter typeface—a gebrochene Schrift in German, which meant “broken font”—which the bends of the letters were angular or “broken,” as abrupt changes in stroke direction occur. 

Although its roots lie in medieval Europe, fraktur was an art form that came into its own and flourished amid the Pennsylvania Germans, who brought it with them to the New World.

German-speaking immigrants brought their knowledge of Fraktur lettering to America. Members of the Ephrata Cloister—a religious community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—produced some of the earliest American fraktur during the 1740s using inks, paints, and paper produced at the Cloister. Pennsylvania Germans made most fraktur between 1740 and 1850 in southeastern Pennsylvania, although many early German immigrants who settled in New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and even Canada made produced fraktur.

The Cloister’s brothers and sisters used fraktur letters to copy scriptures and hymn books. Some of the earliest frakturs done there were quite primitive. The written documents they created weren’t official in nature, but rather represented attempts at basic recordkeeping functions, such as birth and baptismal certificates, and marriage records.

Pennsylvania Germans made fraktur for a variety of reasons. The majority of fraktur were birth and baptismal certificates, called Geburts-und Taufscheine. Some of the many other types of fraktur include writing samples, rewards of merit, house blessings, bookplates, hymnals, New Year’s greetings and love letters.

In order to produce more fraktur in a shorter amount of time, the members of the Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, began using a printing press in the 1780s to produce documents. Nearby cities of Reading, Lancaster, Allentown, Harrisburg, and Hanover soon developed important fraktur printing centers of their own.

Many professional fraktur artists used printed documents to keep up with customer demand. Even so, those living in rural farming communities continued to personalize each printed document. They filled-in customers’ personal information and often handcolored or embellished printed designs.

Pennsylvania German fraktur contained elaborate lettering and colorful drawings, along with intricate borders and scrollwork designs. Artists employed hundreds of different motifs to decorate these documents. Their drawings included vivid illustrations of people, buildings and animals, as well as complicated geometric patterns. The most favored designs were of angels, birds, hearts, and flowers. Some fraktur even depicted mythical creatures such as unicorns or the legendary Wonderfish. The American flag, the bald eagle and other political symbols of the newly formed United States became popular motifs at the beginning of the 19th century.

Prior to 1820, most Pennsylvania Germans belonged to the Lutheran Church or the German Reformed Church. Because of their larger population, followers of the Lutheran Church and the German Reformed Church produced most American fraktur, many of which were either  Geburts or Taufscheine, birth and baptismal certificates.

Berks County, Pennsylvania, families preferred “personalized” forms, and residents held onto the fraktur tradition longer than did neighboring counties. Fraktur artists and itinerants  crisscrossed the county producing birth certificates which by that time now recorded the details of births for vital statistic records. Reading printers created the printed source these artists and scriveners needed to expedite production.

Pennsylvania Germans usually made fraktur for personal use and put them in storage for safekeeping. The personal and religious information recorded on fraktur was of great importance to them. Only a few types of fraktur—such as house blessings or valentines—would have been displayed in their homes. More often, people rolled up fraktur documents and hid them away, pasting them underneath the lids of storage chests or keeping them neatly folded inside books and Bibles.

Fraktur thrived in Pennsylvania German communities for more than a century. By the 1850s, however, interest in fraktur began to decline. Prior to the Civil War, the United States experienced a surge in nationalist pride. With the encouragement of speaking only English,  traditional German-speaking parochial schools and their German schoolmasters, who created many fraktur, soon faded into the past. And baptism, a key force driving the mass-printing of fraktur birth and baptismal certificates, lessened in importance in favor of confirmation.

Ministers and school teachers created most fraktur on paper for individuals, although often more than one artist usually created them. A scrivener, or professional penman, wrote out the text of the document in the Fraktur scrips, then outlined drawings, and added scrollwork. A decorator, who may or may not have been the same person, applied the vibrant colors and motifs that decorated it. 

A variety of instruments filled the fraktur artist’s toolkit. Some of the most important tools included quill pens, brushes, straight edges, compasses, stencils, woodcut stamps, pencils and paper. Fraktur artists used laid paper during the 1700s. Woven paper—which has a smoother surface—became common after 1810. Decorators used imported pigments—carmine, vermilion, umber, gamboge and indigo—to make their colorful inks. They mixed these pigments with various binding substances to create glossy or muted effects. Scriveners usually wrote with iron gall ink—a standard writing ink blended from iron salts and vegetable tannins. Unfortunately, iron gall ink was very acidic and caused many fraktur to deteriorate.

Originally, the inks used to draw fraktur would had been concocted of natural ingredients such as berries, iron oxide and apple juice. However, the acids found in these inks led to deterioration and discoloration, or to brown stains left behind by the iron oxides. 

Perhaps because of these concerns, the Ephrata Cloisters’ fraktur artisans relied mainly on black inks and plainer styles of fraktur without the illumination and decoration of others produced at that time.

Images of the bird or distelfink were common on Pennsylvania German fraktur, and, as with most of the fraktur images, they had symbolic importance. Parakeets typically represented the soul, as people viewed the birds as liaisons between heaven and earth.

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.

Seeing the World in Almost 3-D

 

QUESTION: When I was a kid in the 1950s, I received a View-Master stereoscope for Christmas. It came with several reels of photos, plus I could buy additional ones. I loved viewing photos of my favorite TV show characters, especially the westerns, as well as scenes of faraway places. As an adult, I continued my fascination with the stereoscope when I discovered an antique one at a fleamarket. It came with a box of paired photos mounted on cardboard. I’ve always wondered how the stereoscope came about? Can you give me some insight into its history?

ANSWER: A stereoscope was an instrument in which two photographs of the same object, taken from slightly different angles, could simultaneously be presented, one to each eye. This recreated the way which in natural vision, each eye views an object from a slightly different angle, separated by several inches. This is what gives humans natural depth perception. A separate lens focused each picture, and by showing each eye a photograph taken several inches apart from each other and focused on the same point, the stereoscope recreated the natural effect of seeing things in three dimensions.

Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the earliest stereoscopes, which optician R. Murray made for him in 1832. On June 21, 1838, Wheatstone gave a presentation of his invention at the Royal College of London in which he used a pair of mirrors at 45 degree angles to the user's eyes, each reflecting a picture located off to the side. It demonstrated the importance of binocular depth perception by showing that when two pictures simulating left-eye and right-eye views of the same object are presented so that each eye sees only the image designed for it, but apparently in the same location, the brain will fuse the two and accept them as a view of one solid three-dimensional object. Unfortunately, Wheatstone introduced his stereoscope the year before the first practical photographic processes became available, so he had to use drawings at first. This mirror stereoscope allowed two pictures to be used if desired.

Though David Brewster didn’t invent the stereoscope, he built a simple stereoscope without lenses or mirrors, consisting of a wooden box 18 inches long, 7 inches wide, and 4 inches high, which he used to view drawn landscape transparencies. In 1849, he suggested using lenses to unite the dissimilar pictures. This allowed a reduction in picture size, creating hand-held devices, which became known as Brewster Stereoscopes, which Queen Victoria admired when he demonstrated them at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

But Brewster couldn’t find a British instrument maker capable of constructing his design, so he took it to France, where Jules Duboscq , who made stereoscopes and stereoscopic daguerreotypes, improved the design, allowing the display of Queen Victoria’s likeness to be displayed at The Great Exhibition. Thanks to her, stereoscopes became a huge success, with 250,000 of them produced, along with a great number of stereoviews, stereo cards, stereo pairs or stereographs. Stereoscope makers sent stereographers throughout the world to capture views for the new medium and feed the demand for 3D images. They then had cards printed with these views often with explanatory text. When a user looked at them through the double-lensed viewer,  also called a stereopticon, they could see both. 

In 1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes created but deliberately didn’t patent a handheld, streamlined, much more economical viewer than had been available before. This stereoscope from the 1850s, consisted of two prismatic lenses and a wooden stand to hold the stereo card. This type of stereoscope remained in production for a century and is the type most associated with the name.

Another type of viewer was the multiple view stereoscope which allowed viewing multiple stereoscopic images in sequence by turning a knob or crank, or pushing down a lever. Antoine Claudet patented the first one in 1855, but the design of Alexander Beckers from 1857 formed the basis for many revolving stereoscopes manufactured from the 1860s onward. The user placed the images in holders attached to a rotating belt. The belt could usually hold 50 paper card or glass stereoviews, but there were also large floor standing models capable of holding 100 or 200 views.

A more advanced multiple view stereoscope was only intended for glass slides and was especially popular in France, as the printing of stereo images on glass was a French specialty popular until the 1930s. The French made most of these devices, but ICA and Ernemann also made them in Germany. Users placed the glass slides in a bakelite or wooden tray. Turning a crank or pushing down a lever to lift a slide from the tray, bringing it into the viewing position. Turning further placed the slide back in the tray and moved the tray over a rail to select the next slide. The most sophisticated and well known design was the Taxiphote by Jules Richard, patented in 1899.

In the mid-20th century, the View-Master stereoscope, first patented in 1939, featured a rotating cardboard disk which contained image pairs. It was originally popular as a way for people to virtually travel to faraway places, but by the 1950s had become a popular toy. 

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 "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 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 Chest by Any Other Name

 

QUESTION: I have inherited a chest that originally belonged to my great-grandmother which had been passed down to her daughter, my grandmother, then to my mother, her daughter. My mother used the chest, made of cedar, to store blankets and linens in her bedroom. I inherited it when she died two years ago. People have told me that it was a hope chest. What was a hope chest and what was it used for?

ANSWER:  “A rose by any other name....” so go the words of William Shakespeare. The same can be said of the “hope” chest. Originally referred to as a dowry chest, cedar chest, or trousseau chest, it changed names with the times. The dowry chest was meant to contain assets–money and jewelry—that the family of the bride gave to the groom in exchange for their daughter’s hand in marriage. But hope chest implies something else—the hope for a good life for her in marriage.

Young unmarried women used a hope chest to collect and store items, such as clothing and household linen, in preparation for married life. Americans called this a "hope chest" or "cedar chest" while the British referred to it as a "bottom drawer." 

Using her own needlework skills to construct a trousseau was for a young girl the equivalent of planning and saving for marriage by her future husband. The collection of a trousseau was a common coming-of-age rite until the 1950s, a step on the road to marriage between courting a man and engagement. Such a chest was an acceptable gift for a girl approaching a marriageable age.

What did a young girl put in her hope chest? Typically, she stored traditional dowry items, such as special dresses, table linens, towels, bed linens, quilts, silverware, and sometimes  kitchen items. As a bride would normally leave home when she married, cabinetmakers often made hope chests to be portable by including sturdy handles on either side. 

Traditionally, a mother would pass her hope chest down to her daughter. She would start preparing a hope chest from the time her daughter was a young age and slowly build the collection as the years went by. The chests contained many things thought of as “essentials,” such as china, silverware, linens, clothing, and jewelry, that a young woman would need to start a new life in marriage.

It was also standard practice to include family heirlooms and mementos. Things like albums or photographs, letters or treasured objects passed down through the generations that may not have much monetary or practical value but which would comfort the young woman in her new home.

The chest itself was often made of cedar. At that time, cedar was easily available and a popular choice for storage thanks to its naturally fresh, long-lasting fragrance, as well as natural resistance to mold and insects. Cedar also had a naturally warm color and a softer, cozier texture.

But hope chests didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Around 3,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians created boxes and wooden chests with dovetail joints. The wealthier a girl was, the more ornately-decorated and -painted was her hope chest.

Between the 5th and 15th centuries, wooden chests saw a period of prosperity. In Europe, most were made of hardwoods like oak, poplar, walnut, pine woods and some soft woods. It was during this time that decorating a chest wasn’t just reserved for kings; it became common practice to add friezes and panels to the outer lid of a chest. Handles also began to appear, but not for decoration. During times of wars, battles and invasions, a household had to be ready to pack up their things and flee at a moment’s notice.

The 17th century witnessed a change in the hope chest—the addition of drawers. For the first time in history, cabinetmakers incorporated storage drawers into chest design. At first, it was simply the addition of two small drawers underneath the chest. By the end of the century, chest makers chose mahogany and employed inlay materials like pearl and bone. They also began to finish the chests with a coat of lacquer.

By the 19th century, the hope chest had evolved into a tradition in most families, especially among immigrants to America. This was typical among Scandinavian and German immigrants. The Amish have had a long traditions of plainly constructed chests with extensive painted decoration.

Today, the tradition of keeping a hope chest has faded away. One of the primary reasons is that such a chest tends to glorify the outdated idea of a “dowry.”  Also, it isn’t the most practical  since the items traditionally kept in a hope chest, like fancy linens and dresses, aren’t exactly the things a modern bride “needs” for a successful marriage. However, antique hope chests can be found in both antique shops and shows. And the more decoration one has, the higher the price.

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 "folk art" in the 2023 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.