A Discourse on Boxes of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Most books on English Antique Oak furniture are mainly concerned with the larger pieces such as beds, court cupboards, chests, tables and chairs. This is the first book to be dedicated entirely to the small English domestic table boxes and desks of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Known almost universally as "Bible" boxes, until recently these delightful little articles of everyday use were virtually ignored by collectors and dealers alike. The author illustrates fifty-three examples from the 16th to the 18th Centuries, arranged for ease of reference in a chronological sequence, and suggests methods of dating them from an examination of the style of ornament, the timber content, and methods of construction. He traces the origins of the Classical motifs which decorate many of the early boxes, and reveals a link between embroidery patterns and woodcarving during the post-Restoration period. Most of the dating techniques demonstrated in this book can also be applied to larger items of carved English oak furniture of the period covered.Anthony Conybeare was a Forestry Consultant working in the Westcountry, where he specialised in the management of privately-owned oak woodlands. His affection for the timber led him into a study of the use of English oak in the construction of furniture during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. For the past twenty years or so he had been recording and photographing antique oak desks and table boxes, and in this book has brought together the results of a survey which perhaps could not be repeated. His controversial previous book, "Trees, Chests and Boxes of the 16th and 17th centuries" has stimulated debate by Furniture Historians into the possibility of fixing a place of manufacture for items of antique oak furniture by examination of the variation in width of the annual rings of the timber from which they were made. In this new book he brings together his expertise in woodwork and photography to present a well-researched account of the little domestic boxes which were so indispensable to our ancestors. He confesses to a wry amusement at the fact that the Victorians unwittingly placed their most sacred book in boxes which were often decorated with pagan symbols of great antiquity