Trunk
Category
Furniture
Date
1650 - 1850
Materials
Wood, iron, sealskin
Measurements
35.5 cm (dia)83 cm (h)
Order this imageCollection
Chastleton House, Oxfordshire
NT 1430182
Summary
A skin-covered travelling trunk, North European, 17th – 19th century. Cylindrical but with flat bottom, of softwood covered in pony-skin secured with bands of leather fixed with domed metal studs, and with (later?) crude iron straps at the ends. Once with loops to secure straps, now lacking. Iron lockplate and hasp. An iron loop carry handle to either end. Lined with pages from The branch of the Lord, the beauty of Sion: or, The Glory of the Church, in its relation unto Christ. Opened in two sermons; one preached at Berwick, the other at Edinburgh, By John Owen, Minister of the Gospel, published by Joseph Marshall, 1650.
Full description
Travelling trunks like these are notoriously difficult to date, because they changed little over time. For instance, this very similar example at Colonial Williamsburg Trunk – Works – The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (history.org) is dated 1784 in metal studding to the lid, whilst another in the same collection Trunk – Works – The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (history.org) bears a label for a late 18th century maker. Nonetheless, the Chastleton example may be late 17th century. It is very similar to a trunk discovered walled into Salemsbury Hall in Lancashire. Containing a mass kit, that has been linked, albeit with no firm evidence, to a priest operating in Lancashire in the 1620s. Both the Salmesbury Hall trunk and the Chastleton trunk are lined with 17th century paper: the former with a late 17th century wallpaper of which a fragment from Clandon Park survives at the V&A, the latter with pages from printed sermons of 1650. These printed papers may conceal earlier lining paper. It could be the ‘one Coffer’ (originally the term coffer meant a covered trunk or box) in the Nursery in the inventory taken at Chastleton in 1633. See D. Thornton, ‘Volpone’s Chest? The Tale of a Trunk’, in Furniture History, Vol. LI (2015), 51-62. Dr Megan Wheeler, Assistant National Curator (Furniture) – May 2024