Posted 11 years ago
Glahar2691
(2 items)
Wondered if anyone would know what year this was from?
Was given to me by my mother. Has been in our family for many years . I love this trunk and cannot find any information on it.
Thank you
GlaHar
This is a very beautiful chest you have. More of a dowry chest or blanket chest than a trunk in my opinion. The pictures are not very clear so getting a close up for inspection is difficult -- but if I was to hazard a guess on what I can see it looks to be from about 1850 or so. A closer clear picture of the side dove tails and nail heads would help get a better fix on date. Wonderful piece -- thanks for the post and welcome to collectors weekly!
Welcome. Now how about some measurements? Kind of resembles a seaman's chest.
Thank you so much for both your inputs!! I will take better pictures tomorrow in the light . It is 3 foot long and 1 foot 9 1/2 inches wide. All wood with the German name über premen... And other German writing on both ends. It is not a true tongue and groove look bit something similar... More interesting.
Uber means about en anglaise. I'm curious about the joints too. Have to look up when tongue & grove was started.
A little bit big for a seaman's chest, but it sure has "character". Made of wood says pre-1870's to me. Of course, what do I know? I'm "T-mans" student. I'm in love with though.
I posted more detailed pics but they moved them to furniture and trunks. Trying to get use to where to post the pictures.
I'm looking at the handle back plate & that the handle is mounted a little too high so that the "stop-prongs" on the handles actually appear to hit the wood a bit. This tells me the wood worker was more experienced than the blacksmith. After industrialization, I would not expect to see that mistake in factory made handles. This means hand forged to me. I'm now going to guess between 1780's-1830's. But, what do I know. Really nice piece & you might want to compare with an orig. seaman's chest I posted that was from that time period. Very similar.