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ANTIQUE TRAVELLING CHESTS
July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
TRAVELLING CHESTS
CHEST is a term that has been applied to a number of articles more or less box-shaped and opening with a rising lid. Records of the craftsmen who made chest furniture and of the guilds and companies, the churches and great houses, that used them, all contribute terms and definitions but constantly contradict each other. In this survey of chest furniture, this wide application of the word chest is accepted. Even as late as 173o Bailey’s dictionary made no attempt to be specific: a coffer was a chest or trunk, a chest was ‘a sort of box, coffer or trunk’. Addison in 1700 used the term for a basket, ‘a chest of twining osiers’, such as one must assume Lady Grisell Baillie meant by her Dutch basket ‘for my cloathes’ in 1693. Moreover, chests in their hey-day served a multitude of purposes. Throughout the Middle Ages a man’s possessions travelled with him, but when he settled down the chests in which they were packed or trussed became the furniture that displayed them.
The very word trunk indicates how early and primitive were men’s first attempts to make stronger luggage than skin-covered osier baskets. A few ancient dug-outs remain, usually of oak, occasionally, as in Ackington Church, Worcestershire, of elm. The oldest dug-outs were succeeded first by the carpenter’s hammered-up constructions, then gradually by the joiner’s framed work until the cabinet, the chest at its most refined and most perfectly individualistic, became recognized as the most highly skilled creation in the whole craft of woodworking. But for the travel chest in particular the ancient rounded top of the dug-out was preserved. Since to truss was a familiar word meaning to pack or bundle goods, the traveller’s chest was probably most frequently specified by the prefix ‘trussing’. Numerous references may be found to trussing chests, such as in 1540, in an Act of Henry VIII. In the early 17th century Howard Accounts, with their frequent references to freight, boat-hire and portage of luggage between London and the North, trunks and trunk chests appeared accepted terms.
The other term particularly associated with travelling chests is coffer. The cofferer was long recognized as the craftsman who covered chests and other furniture with leather. As early as 1483 the Guild of Cofferers protested against the competition of imported Flanders chests, and, until late in the 18th century, coffer-makers were listed among the officers of the royal household. But in common usage the term appears generally to have indicated a wide variety of strongly built chests, and will find further mention in later sections.
Boarded Chests: early, poor alternatives to the framed or jointed chest, the horizontal planks of wood forming the front and back being hammered to the vertical end-pieces or flush with heavy corner stiles, and frequently reinforced with corner-pieces of iron. As wood tends to shrink across the grain, the result was never satisfactory, and the horizontal planks usually show signs of splitting. Oak might be used, or planks of elm, large and comparatively little given to warping. The flush construction as contrasted with the loose panels of the mortise-and-tenon jointed chest offered a smooth surface for covering with leather or hair cloth.
Busse Chests: buscarles’ or seamen’s chests.
Close Nailing: brass convex-headed nails of a darkish tint of brass hammered with great exactitude by the cofferer, head beside head, were used all around the edges of the leather-covered chest and in sufficient numbers over the body of the piece to avoid any loose flapping of the inelastic cover. Similar treatment was given to hair cloth.
Coffers: a term that must be considered also in connexion with Plate Chests, but has always had particular association with the leather-covered travelling chest, the work of the cofferer. Randall Holme, in 1662, made the distinction that a coffer was called a chest if it had a straight and flat cover, a chest being like a coffer ’save the want of a circular lid or cover’.
Fitted Chests: coach travel became more popular and widespread in the 17th century, the experienced traveller taking his own fitted chest or case containing drinking glasses and square glass bottles, or a silver dining set consisting of a nest of tumblers, and knife, fork and spoons. Some 18th-century cases contained porcelain tea equipages. Doctors travelled with essential surgeons’ chests, and craftsmen with tool chests that represented their livelihood.
Hair Cloth: cloth woven with horse-hair was strong and rain-repellent, and was used like leather to cover wooden travelling chests and trunks. As it had no elasticity in the weft threads, it was close-nailed like leather. There is reference in the Verney Memoirs, 1653, to ‘yelowe haire Sumpter trunkes’. Some 17th-century writers specified fustian, others merely cloth to cover trunks, sometimes scarlet and even crest-embroidered, requiring an outer casing of leather. In the later 18th century hair cloth was available in a wide range of colours and stripes, and many a hair trunk studded with brass rosettes in a sqmewhat medieval manner was manufactured for the rough and tumble of coach travel in the early 19th century.
Hinges: pin hinges – the early medieval chest might have a rather clumsy pivot arrangement for opening the canted lid. A pair of horizontal pivots worked in slots cut in the back stiles of the chest. Often small iron plates were introduced, to protect the pivots, Strap hinges – these, of iron, were usual after the end of the 13th century.
Leather: cowhide close-nailed was the most usual covering for travelling chests, both standards and trussing coffers. Early leather might be enamelled and gilded, imported from Spain and Holland until an Englishman, Christopher, discovered their methods in 1638. Leather treated with oil and spirits was known as cuir bouilli, the applications rendering it supple enough to take incised ornament in addition to paint and gilding. The Dictionary of Furniture lists Richard Pegge, coffer-maker to Charles II, and Edward Smith, 1750-6o, among suppliers of trunks to the royal household, covered in Russia leather (scented with oil of birch-bark). Pegge’s were supplied with and without drawers, and included such details as one lined with sarcenet and quilted, and two covered with sealskin and bound with girdles of ox leather.
Linings: trunk lining became a specialized job, and in travelling chests particularly the work was important if the chest contents were to be protected from the drifts of dust that constituted roads and the rushes and rubbish scattered over flagstones or wooden flooring. Linen has always had terminological association with lining, and was the most suitable fabric until 18th-century cotton became strong and Closely woven enough to be considered as a possible alternative. Paper, hand-made and soft textured, soon rubbed, but was widely used. It may be of particular interest to the collector; for sheets of unsaleable books were used when available, the plain backs printed in wood-block patterns.
Metal-work: travelling chests were frequently ironbound, sometimes almost covered in iron; but these may be regarded as travelling safes and receive further consideration under the section on Plate Chests. The close nailing that protected the leather covering was reinforced with corner-straps, and often with a massive and handsome lockplate, early work being shaped cold by sawing like wood. Pepys mentioned in 1662 that ‘we were forced to send for a smith, to break open her trunk’. Remaining specimens tend to have replacement locks, often with hinge pins too easily removed or damaged for any security.
Panelled Chests: typified joiners’ as distinct from carpenters’ furniture. The horizontal rails and vertical stiles and muntins that formed the framework to the loose panels of the chest were held together by mortise-and-tenon joints, allowing the wood to respond to atmospheric changes.
joiners’ work in 1632 was defined to include dovetail joints, and the wide early style of dovetail may be noted down the corners of some chests in walnut, cypress and other woods that could be undercut in a manner impossible with oak. Plat in 1594 made reference to a ‘foure square chest .. . close the sides well with dovetails or cement’. But corner dovetails in view on the outside of a chest are usually taken to indicate Continental work.
Pegged Chests: occasionally a chest is noted which can be dismantled for travelling or store by removing wooden pegs in the style of many early table trestles. Some are authenticated, but obviously the design was very much in the mood of the 19th-century’s pseudo-medievalism.
Portmanteaux: a term introduced about the mid-16th century, applied to cases specifically for horse travel yet large enough for bulky clothing. In the 162os, for instance, the Howard Accounts refer to a leather portmanteau priced I os. Id., and in 1611 Cotgrave noted ‘a portmantse with chaine and Locke’. There are numerous references to portmanteau saddles, even to portmanteau horses, in the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus the London Gazette referred to ‘a coloured leather Portmantle Saddle’. Such a saddle, according to Randall Holme, had ‘a Cantle behind the seat to keep the Portmantle . . . off the Rider’s back’.
Royal Crown on Travelling Chests: this may be found in close nailing or engraved on metal fittings, and is often assumed to indicate personal association with a monarch. It is thought more likely to indicate that the chest may have been used on Government service or by one of the palaces.
Standards: when a wealthy family travelled, their household goods might be conveyed in huge leather-covered, iron-bound, vividly painted standards. Here again is a term that must receive consideration also among other types of chest furniture.
Sumpter Trunks: a usual term for the pairs of travelling chests carried by Sumpter- or baggage-horses or mules, or in the late 18th-century Sumpter cars. Lady Grisell Baillie paid four pounds fora pair in 1715. Sumpter-horses were comparable with pack-horses. Bailey, in 1730, defined a pack as a horse-load of wool – about 240 pounds. Sumpter-cloths frequently bore the crest or cipher of their owner.
Tills: forerunners of the fitted tray in a modern trunk. Inside many a 17th-century chest a small tray was fitted on the right near the lid. Sometimes it was itself lidded, the lid hingeing into the framework of the chest; sometimes it was locked and occasionally had a false-bottomed hiding-place. Catharine of Aragon in 1534 had ‘one cofar having four tilles therin, the forefronte of every one of them gilte’. The lidded box-like tills in a chest might be called drawing chests or drawers, although the chest-of-drawers, as a considerable piece of bedroom furniture and as distinct from a cabinet of tiny drawers, was evolved only in the 17th century. Thus, in 1599, Minshen referred to ‘a great chest or standard with drawing chests or boxes in it’.
Trenails or Treenails: the old term for the cylindrical pins of hardwood used for fastening timber together, mentioned for instance in an inventory of 1571: ‘iij houndrethe treenales viijd’. Square wooden pins might be used green, driven into round holes for greater firmness.
Trunks: probably the most common term for a travelling chest, leather-covered and with a rounded top to suffer as little as possible from wet weather. It was used in association with a number of terms regarding such chests. Thus the brass convex-headed nail used by the cofferer was a trunk nail, and there was a trunk saddle recorded as early as 1569. Moxon in 1677 distinguished between trunk locks, chest locks and padlocks.
Trussing Coffers: a frequent term for leather-covered travelling chests, usually implying smaller articles than standards; as, for instance, was indicated in a reference of 1622: ‘Commodities packt up in Bundels, Trusses, Cases, Coffers, or Packes.