Fitted Boxes

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	French boulle jewelry box, circa 1850

Antique jewelry boxes range from small pieces commissioned to hold a specific piece of jewelry or matched set to multi-compartment giants with drawers, lift-out trays, and mirrors inside. They typically have beautiful customized interiors of antique silks and cut velvets. Sallea Antiques has a large collection of French and English boxes fitted for jewelry for both men and women. Woods often include walnut, rosewood, amboyna, ebony, mahogany, and coromandel.

Knife Boxes

	Late 18th century slant-front knife boxes

Eighteenth century knives and spoons, like tea, were a prerequisite of the wealthy and required special cases for their storage and display. The interiors of knife boxes were elaborately partitioned so that the knives could be set with their handles up. Much use was made of wood veneers, the most popular being mahogany used in combination with other woods such as satinwood, ebony, rosewood, sycamore, tulipwood, pear, olive, walnut and elm. The art of wood veneer decoration had existed for several centuries, but the perfection of the technique and height of its popularity came in the 17th and 18th centuries for several reasons. The same increase of exploration and trade that brought tea to the Europeans also brought a variety of exotic woods, albeit in small quantities and at high cost. One of the advantages of wood veneering was that these small quantities could be made to cover much larger areas of local, less expensive woods by slicing the rare wood into thin sheets. It also allowed furniture makers to feature the natural grain of the wood so that the repeat of a “flame” pattern in mahogany or the “burl” in walnut would often be the main design element in a box or piece of furniture.

Eventually inlaid designs of colored veneers became the predominant style or decoration and knife boxes are some of the best examples of this technique. Both the exteriors and interiors would be lavishly inlaid with neo-classical motifs and borders.

Cosmetics Boxes

	A variety of early 19th century fitted toiletry cases

As with most antique boxes, fitted toiletry cases were made for very specific purposes and contents. These “compendia” were designed to carry everything a 19th century woman of style and means would need in her travels. The finest English fitted boxes can be bound in brass with silver-topped cut crystal bottles, manicure and sewing tools with mother-of-pearl or ivory handles, jewelry drawers, with a mirror and letter compartment in the lid. French examples tend to be even more elaborate.

While both ladies’ and men’s cases were done in a variety of specialty veneers such as rosewood, coromandel, or burl walnut and often featured inlaid decoration of mother-of-pearl, abalone, or brass, the earlier men’s cases were predominantly mahogany with brass fittings. Ivory and ebony were the materials of choice for shaving implements.

Gun Boxes

Similar in construction to English lap desks, mahogany gun boxes were fitted to hold one or two shotguns and were carried in their own canvas bags. Most have simple brass fittings and handles and make handsome narrow tables when mounted on matching mahogany bases

Humidors

Tobacco consumption in England was generally limited to snuff until the beginning of the 19th century when cigars were brought back from Spain by the military. Their use was limited by high import duties until 1830, but after this date the production of humidors and small cigar and cheroot cases expanded rapidly

The Sallea inventory of humidors ranges from traditional English boxes of mahogany and brass to very decorative French chests of veneers with inlaid decoration