Box, Storage

Description

Maple box and lid rims steam-bent to an oval shape, with swallow-tails (five on the box, and one on the lid), fastened with copper tacks. White pine headers held in place with copper points. Originally painted salmon on exterior surfaces, with some traces remaining along the rim.

Notes

This is the largest existing oval box made by the Shakers, fully eight inches longer than the largest standard size box made for sale in the Mount Lebanon box shop. That this is the only known example of a box of this size suggests that it was made to serve a specific purpose in the community rather than to be sold. There is no physical evidence to tell us what the purpose was, but its size demands that its contents not be heavy. Except for its size, the box is typical of those made at Mount Lebanon before the Shakers began using special box-making machinery in the early 1830s. The machinery for regulating thickness and smoothing the maple rims and for cutting out the oval shaped pine headings (i.e., tops and bottoms) frequently left telltale marks on the surface of the wood that helped date boxes. The unusual size of the box, however, may have demanded that earlier techniques for planing the rims and cutting the oval heading be used. Then the box would date from the 1850s. The upper edge of both ends of this box split when the rim was bent. The split was repaired at the time the box was made using the same copper tacks used to fasten the overlapping ends of the rim together. Originally, the box was painted, but now only remnants of the pumpkin colored paint remain on the box rim beneath the overlap of the top rim.