Muniment chest
Category
Furniture
Date
1500 - 1600
Materials
Oak, covered in leather/hide/rawhide, and painted black, with iron bands, straps and handles, canvas-lined to the interior
Measurements
50 x 152 cm
Place of origin
Flanders
Order this imageCollection
Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire
NT 1127903
Summary
A black-painted oak, rawhide or leather and iron standard, or muniment chest, possibly imported from Flanders, possibly English, 15th/16th century, of a type used to store valuables and muniments, and possibly one of the many 'chestes', 'standards' and 'trunckes' described in the inventory of Hardwick Hall in 1601. This example, with a flat lid, is covered with rawhide or leather beneath iron straps and iron corner reinforcements. Covered originally with rawhide under the iron strapwork. Fitted with six angular iron carry handles: one two each end, and a pair to each long side. Canvas-lined to the interior.
Provenance
Possibly one of the many 'trunckes', 'standards' or 'iron bound chestes' mentioned in the Hardwick Hall inventory of 1601. By descent until, following the death of Edward William Spencer Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire (1895 - 1950), Hardwick Hall and its contents were accepted by HM Treasury in part payment of death duties and transferred to the National Trust, in 1959.
References
Rowell, Christopher, 'Furniture at Hardwick Hall - II', in David Adshead and David Taylor, Hardwick Hall: A Great Old Castle of Romance (2016), 167