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Things to do in Tracing Carved Moldings of the Style of Early American Colonial FurnitureThe History of the Origin of the Design Period Known as Early American Colonial Furniture

Continued from the list of things to do in tracing carved moldings.

6. Study attentively any representation of Greek or Roman ornament or architecture.
7. Never pass a technical word if you are not perfectly sure of its meaning. Underline them when they first occur if the book is your own. Keep a notebook and enter the word, its derivation-this is often very interesting-and its meaning or meanings, and add sketches.
   What is meant by : escarpment, papyri, rail, stile, rebates, sarco¬phagus, mitre, coved, tenon, stretcher, fret, moulding, fluting, swag, trestle ?
8. Make a model of a Northern Hall (see Airne's " Story of Saxon and Norman Britain ").

The Chest

FURNITURE of the carved moldings of the style known has Early American Colonial Furniture is made to serve three chief purposes, (i) to put things on, (2) to put things in, (3) to sit or lie on. The simplest forms serving these three purposes are (i) the shelf, (2) the box, and (3) the stool.

There are odds and ends, such as screens, which may be called miscellanea.

The number of names given to boxes and box-like articles of furniture are some indication to the importance of the box. In France the words mainly used were " coffre " (Eng. coffer) and " huche " (Eng. hutch). So important was the making of chests that " huchier " became the name of all furniture-makers, and in England the cofferer gave way to the cabinet-maker who made chests full of little drawers and whose name was adopted by the most skilled of woodworkers. In England the word " chest " was usually used for a large lidded box, as in " parish chest," church chest, linen chest, dower chest, tool chest, tea chest, chest of drawers, medicine chest, etc. " Case " is not so common, although show­case, clock-case, book-case, case of instruments, suit-case and attache-case are well known. Boxes we have innumerable, as well as the special use of the word as in knife-box (which usually is not a box), match-box (which usually is a little drawer), snuff-boxes, work-boxes, alms-box and poor-box, and not least the Christmas box, which was a collecting box in which small coins were put to give children, apprentices, servants, lather-boys, etc., a Christmas treat, etc. The small box is a casket, or, it may be, a caddy. In churches there are " shrines " which are chests for containing precious relics, and in the church-yard there are coffins.

The chest is stated to be undoubtedly the oldest form of furniture. We have spoken already of Egyptian chests and boxes. There is no doubt that many of the Israelities worked as skilled craftsmen in Egypt, and that Bezaleel was one of the these. We read of him The craftsmen working of the style known as Early American Colonial Furniture 

"And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship. To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, and in all manner of workmanship."

The trunk in the origin  of the style known as Early American Colonial Furniture

CHESTS : DUG-OUT AND SLAB CONSTRUCTIONS

1. Primitive Dug-out	7. Early Trunks
2. Saxon Chest	8. Early Trunks
3. Perfected Dug-out	9. Early Trunks
4. Chest at Wimborne	10. a. and b. Sides
5. Chest showing Slab Construction	11. a. and b. Feet
6. Early Trunks	12. Jacobean Chest

 

In the origins of the style known as Early American Colonial Furniture we see in the Bible man made with the help of God the most famous box of all time, the Ark of the Covenant. You can read how he made it in Exodus, Chapter 37.

It is in the Bible that we find the first reference to a collecting box, " Jehoida the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it . . . and the priests that kept the door put therein all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord." The extreme antiquity of the box is illustrated in the Greek myth of Pandora, who was the first woman to be created and who was given a box containing all human ills which were released by her curiosity. Out of pity, though, Hope was also enclosed in the chest.

The Romans made full use of chests and boxes. Treasure chests were bound with iron, and for safety were often placed by their owners in the temples. Books, which were rolls of parchment or vellum, were kept in circular boxes of beechwood which were sometimes strengthened by metal hoops. These were the ancestors of our band-boxes for collars, etc.