Posted 14 years ago
senor_trunk
(28 items)
Know very little about this trunk, little to no rust, wood handles, looks like a handmade lock. Herringbone style tin in great shape.
Measures 27" long, 14" wide 12" deep.. Pine under the metal.
Wooden runners on the bottom are offset, appears to be hand made.
Metal cleaned up real nice no longer appears dirty.
Anybody help me with this one?
Nice little trunk
Your little trunk is very clean and rust free partly because the silver colored metal is zinc or zinc coated, which was done mostly in the 1870's but began in the late 1860's. It faded out in the early 1880's when many of the other cheaper painted embossed tin metal trunks came out with lots of designs. But the best thing about the zinc is that it doesn't really rust the way the sheet iron and tin metal would and didn't need to be painted or japanned. Through my research I have found a similar patterned zinc metal patent for trunks from 1876 by Alexander Campfield of New Jersey. He may have done this one too. So most of the time when you see a zinc covered trunk it will be from the 1870's to early 1880's. The wooden handles are nice and were used from the late 1860s all the way until about 1910. They were still sold by parts companies in the 1890's and were used mostly on smaller trunks. Nice little trunk.
Thanks trunker, i have the one book written on trunk identification and value and several of your research papers, but with your knowledge you should write another. I'll be first in line!
Thanks senor_trunk. I have been studying and researching trunks in depth in the last few years with the help of internet historical resources, but also many years prior to that based on working on trunks. Actually I am working on a booklet now on the history of the slat trunk (often called oak slat trunks). It has taken a lot of time, but I have lots of good factual history on these and the makers now. There is a lot of incorrect information being written on some websites, books, and wikipedia, because people have been making up stories and don't have the facts to base it on. Well, I believe in getting the facts on these antique trunks and it is sometimes different than what a lot of people have heard or read somewhere else. I have hundreds of trunk patents, old newspaper articles, trunk labels, many old trunk catalogs, etc. to base this on. I would love to do another book on antique trunks if I find the time. Thanks.
i knew you had provided insight into the Antique Trunks book, but didn't know you had written one. Is it available for purchase?
In the short period I have been researching I have found a tremendous amount of conflicting information. I have found yours and one or two others to mess pretty well and therefore I consider it to be very well thought out and factual.
A book based on true history would be outstanding