The chance of finding and bringing home an object like this is what gets me out of bed early in the morning to go to a show--and being a box, this itself embodies/opens up as a series of discoveries. (For me this box also very much embodies the joy of looking and learning, as it is only recently that I've been awakened too the extraordinariness of late 18th/early 19th century Napoleonic prisoner of war straw work....more on that below).
This is a sewing box, with four small holes on the sides of the exterior (three of them still circled with bone), through which the ends of thread, from spools housed inside, would have been pulled. Two doors on the interior that open upward would conceal the spools and whatever other sewing notions were held inside, and there is a mirror on the underside of the lid, too. What makes this an especially special one are the watercolor paintings inlaid at the center of the lid, and at the center of the underside, and two more on the front face--all featuring tall ships (the one on the lid appears to be flying the Danish flag) and architectural structures, including lots of towers. For me it all adds up to just the sort of thing I love and that feels intensely heartening to me-- the transformation of very humble materials through the investment a huge amount of labor and care--by a prisoner of war no less--into something very special. And itself a vessel, carrying the resilience and legacy of its maker, and history more broadly, across time and place. And it is shaped like a book!
Straw work of this sort is most often referred to as Napoleonic prisoner of war work, as most pieces available today were made in England in prisoner of war camps and prison ships between 1793 and 1815. Drawing on traditions practiced in many parts of the Far East and Europe for centuries prior, the prisoners, primarily French and Dutch (as I am certain is the case with this one), applied their knowledge of straw work to construct boxes in this manner from the very modest materials available to them. There is an excellent blog entry on the site of Garden Court Antiques, San Francisco, all about it here.
8" x 5 3/4" x 3 1/4". As is most often the case with prisoner of war straw work pieces (225 years old or so) this box shows wear and losses. Photos document it pretty comprehensively. While I believe once all inlaid under glass, on the lid and on one front panel, that glass was as somepoint replaced by clear film. (The glass on the other front panel and on the underside remains in place.) There is fading/toning the watercolors as a result (while the one on the underside, protected by the glass and from the sun, shows the original brilliant color.) Straw and a little wood loss to the front facing side, and otherwise loss of straw work here and there. One ivory thread guard lost, and one hinge replaced with wire. One "door" inside is loose (there is a pin in it, and a hole for the pin to go in, so with some care one might be able to secure it; I have left as found, as it sits flat just like the other, which functions as it should.) Lastly, there is one clean crack to the glass covering the watercolor on the underside, holding in place fine and barely discernible, but one wants to be gentle handling it. SO, far from perfect, but to me the losses and imperfections feel very much all a part and of a piece with it.
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