Little Book of Wooden Boxes E-Book

Oscar Fitzgerald

• Herausgeber: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 75

Beschreibung

This craftsman's companion celebrates the woodturners, furniture artists, and elite craftsmen from around the world who have taken box-making to a higher level of aesthetic form. Little Book of Wooden Boxes features 31 of today's finest woodworkers and artisans—Bonnie Bishoff and J. M. Syron, Andy Buck, Kip Christensen, Jim Christiansen, Jean-Christophe Couradin, Andrew Crawford, Michael Cullen, Jenna Goldberg, Louise Hibbert, Michael Hosaluk, Robert Ingham, Ray Jones, Kim Kelzer, Steven Kennard, Yuji Kubo, Po Shun Leong, Peter Lloyd, Tom Loeser, Michael Mode, Craig Nutt, Jay and Janet O'Rouke, Emi Ozawa, Andrew Potocnik, Richard Raffin, Ulrike Scriba, Jeff and Katrina Seaton, Tommy Simpson, Jacques Vesery, Bonnie Klein, and Hans Weissflog—who share their amazing techniques, their inventive talents, and the inspiration that fuels their distinctive designs. Each artist's profile includes full-color, studio-quality photographs of their most spectacular work, including jewelry boxes, desk boxes, reliquaries, keepsake boxes and more, along with insights on their design ideas and objectives. Curated by nationally known historian and author Oscar P. Fitzgerald, this attractive hardcover book makes a wonderful gift for any woodworker.

Leseprobe

About the Curator

Peter Korn is executive of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, a nonprofit woodworking school in Rockport, Maine, which he founded in 1992. He is also chief curator of the center’s Messler Gallery, from which the traveling exhibition Boxes and Their Makers originated. A furniture make since 1974, Korn is the author of Woodworking Basics: Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship (Taunton Press, 2003) and The Woodworker’s Guide to Hand Tools (Taunton Press, 1998.)

© 2019 Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Little Book of Wooden Boxes contains content from New Masters of the Wooden Box, first published in 2009 by

Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-56523-996-8

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

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Printed in Singapore

First printing

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BONNIE BISHOFF AND J.M. SYRON

ANDY BUCK

KIP CHRISTENSEN

JIM CHRISTIANSEN

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE COURADIN

ANDREW CRAWFORD

MICHAEL CULLEN

JENNA GOLDBERG

LOUISE HIBBERT

MICHAEL HOSALUK

ROBERT INGHAM

RAY JONES

KIM KELZER

STEVEN KENNARD

YUJI KUBO

PO SHUN LEONG

PETER LLOYD

TOM LOESER

MICHAEL MODE

CRAIG NUTT

JAY AND JANET O’ROURKE

EMI OZAWA

ANDREW POTOCNIK

RICHARD RAFFAN

ULRIKE SCRIBA

JEFF AND KATRINA SEATON

TOMMY SIMPSON

BONNIE KLEIN AND JACQUES VESERY

PHILIP WEBER

HANS WEISSFLOG

INTRODUCTION

by Oscar Fitzgerald

Boxes are among the most ancient of humankind’s works. Usually with four sides, a bottom, and a lid, boxes contain everything imaginable. Lids can be either hinged to the case or detachable, and secured with a hasp or lock to protect the contents. They can be as large as a big-box store or small enough to hold cufflinks.

Ancient Boxes

The numerous boxes recovered from King Tutankhamen’s tomb were typical of those that held everyday items the pharaohs would need in the afterlife. One small box held the mummified bodies of two stillborn babies that may have been the king’s children. A rectangular wooden box with a hunchbacked lid was decorated with scenes of the hunt or of battles painted on ivory panels on the top, and with floral and animal depictions on the sides. It probably held the king’s robes. Like most of the wooden boxes found in the tomb, it was made with mortise-and-tenon joints and carefully cut dovetails—the same joints used by woodworkers today. The box was secured by string threaded around mushroom-shaped knobs and tied with a knot that was then sealed.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, boxes survived in monasteries and castles in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Box with angels, intended to contain small bottles of holy oils. Champlevé enamel over gilt copper, early thirteenth century, Limoges (Limousin, France).

Many held vestments, holy relics, incense, and plate. Small caskets or decorated boxes served as jewel or valuables boxes. Larger cast-iron boxes were common, and medieval dispatch boxes typically had two keys, one each for sender and recipient.

Work Boxes

By the seventeenth century, a box maker’s guild had been incorporated in England, and its members specialized in wooden boxes with compartments and drawers and slanting lids to hold books for reading. Serving as the portable desks of the time, these boxes held valuable books, writing equipment, and papers. In the eighteenth century, as papers and accounts proliferated and boxes grew larger, they were placed on stands, and the modern desk was born.

Both men and women used dressing boxes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ones for men contained razors, strops and hones, scissors, penknives, and a looking glass. In his The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing-Book (1792), Thomas Sheraton illustrated a square “Lady’s Traveling Box” fitted up for writing, dressing, and sewing equipment. It contained compartments for ink and an adjustable writing surface covered with green cloth; a place for scissors and powder, pomatum, and perfume bottles; and a removable dressing glass. There was even a space to store rings and a clever little windlass for rolling up lace as it was worked.

Snuff and Tobacco Boxes

The heyday for English boxes was in the eighteenth century, and often the most extravagant work was lavished on the tiny snuffbox. After the discovery of tobacco in the New World in the seventeenth century, the elaborate ritual of inhaling powdered tobacco spread throughout Europe. Many gentlemen owned multiple boxes to match their various degrees of dress and the formality of the occasion. Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, reputedly had a different snuffbox for every day of the year.

Unusual English wooden snuffbox fitted with a carved mechanical snake that strikes when the lid is slid open.

By the nineteenth century, the custom of taking snuff declined, and cigarette and cigar smoking increased. As elegant snuffboxes fell out of fashion, they were replaced with larger cigarette and cigar cases. Wooden boxes were inexpensive to make, and by the late-nineteenth century the familiar, six-board cigar box was common. Cigarette and cigar boxes survived well into the twentieth century, though they were mostly of cardboard.

Gift and Souvenir Boxes

As a measure of their preciousness, snuffboxes were often given as gifts or to celebrate heroic deeds or special events. Boxes were issued to commemorate the hot-air balloon assent of the Montgolfier brothers in the late-eighteenth century and to celebrate the victory of Admiral Vernon over the Spanish at Portobello in 1739.

Sailors who made scrimshaw ditty boxes and other items for their loved ones at home continued the tradition of gift boxes into the nineteenth century. In Germany, and also in Pennsylvania, where so many of their countrymen immigrated during the eighteenth century, brides would be given painted oval or round boxes decorated with flowers and figures as a traditional wedding present containing trinkets and ribbons.

Boxing Day, falling the day after Christmas, is celebrated in Britain, Canada, and several other countries, as a day to give gift boxes to servants and tradespeople. Although the exact origin of the custom is obscure, it may relate to the practice of opening church poor-boxes at Christmas time, or to the fact that servants had to work on Christmas Day and were rewarded the day after with gifts—much like today’s Christmas bonus.

Personal Boxes

In addition to gift boxes, a number of other specialized containers were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gentlemen carried nutmeg and graters to flavor their custard, and had pillboxes in their pockets. Different boxes held breath mints and candy, often in elegant boot-shaped boxes and other forms. Comfit boxes filled with candied fruit or seeds were also popular during the nineteenth century.

Women carried round, oval or heart-shaped patch boxes to store swatches of silk or taffeta that they applied to their faces to hide the ravages of smallpox and other blemishes. Fancy boxes of silver, gold, ivory, or enamel were often fitted with a gum-pot and brush to stick the fabric patch to the cheek. Other boxes, similar to women’s compacts today, held mirrors, rouge, and kohl for the eyes.

Among the ubiquitous containers are jewelry boxes, usually fitted with satin or velvet and divided into compartments to hold expensive body adornments.

This early nineteenth century, curly maple, schoolgirl box was probably made at the Bath, Maine, Female Academy. It is painted with romantic, ancient Greek and Roman scenes, including the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.

By the mid-eighteenth century, trinket boxes to hold less-expensive items became popular. Trinkets were essentially small ornaments including jewelry, but also chains, beads, buckles, ribbons, and pendants. The women at female academies that sprung up around the United States in the early nineteenth century decorated many of these square or octagonal boxes. Trinket boxes and jewelry boxes continue in popularity to this day.

Boxes for Clothes

Most clothing was folded and stored in boxes or chests, not hung in closets, until well into the nineteenth century. Hats required their own special boxes. Since the seventeenth century, special boxes protected hats fashioned of costly beaver pelts. Tricorn hats made of felt required triangular boxes usually of cardboard lined with newspaper. By the early nineteenth century, the tricorn was superseded by felt top hats with high crowns and narrow brims. The height of the crown and the width of the brim varied from year to year, much like the width of modern-day ties. Women, who seldom went bare-headed in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, stored their bonnets in special boxes too, along with their stylish ivory, horn, or tortoiseshell combs.

Although some of the cardboard boxes came with cotton bags to protect them, the most durable boxes were fabricated out of wood. Used mostly as trunks during travel, bandboxes fell out of favor as trains and steamboats replaced coach travel. For that, durable, leather-covered, wooden trunks decorated with brass tacks were necessary.