A Box, But Not Pandora's

This wooden box, with a sliding lid and a movable tray inside it, was handmade by either my uncle John or Frank. This was made when they were young joinery apprentices, as a demonstration of skills gained, presumably some time in the fifties, and before they both emigrated to Australia as "£10 poms".

The image glued onto the side shows men and women in a gondola, clearly enjoying a romantic cruise. The colours of the box are the original ones, and the paint shows wear and tear. The stuck-on image is not really to my taste but when Mum gave the box to me, when I was a teenager, she asked me to promise not to repaint it and so I haven't.

The box is used to store art materials which I rarely use, such as chalk and oil pastels, gouache paints, (the same set I've had since art school some 30 years ago), and a ridiculous quantity of HB pencils, (which I hardly ever draw with as the lead is wrong for sketching). The box sits at the back of my art table, half-buried under storage baskets. It's useful but also mildly sentimental, largely due to the family link.

I had a spring clean in my art studio, and needed to move everything off the desk in order to tackle the accumulation of dust, and while the box was accessible I thought I'd share it with you.

This is how my desk usually looks. The box is just visible behind the daffodils.

Comments

Adele Cosgrove-Bray said…

After I posted a link on FB to this blog post, my Aunt Phyllis was able to confirm that it would, in her opinion, her brother Frank who would have made the box. Frank apparently still makes things out of wood in his workshop where he lives in Perth.

Also, my cousin Sylvia shared a photo of another, very similar box which Frank had made. Her box has pictures of roses on each side, and was previously used as a sewing box by her mother, Kathleen. I hadn't know there were two boxes. Or maybe there are more somewhere in our family?

Anyway, this discovery was a happy outcome, I think.

5 March 2023 at 14:58

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