Nice score and a bargain price , there certainly are some nice wood boxes around , thanks for posting .
I bought this box while on holiday in Tasmania. It is a and from my guess based on Googling similar pieces, I would say it was manufactured between 1870 and 1890.
The photos dont really do it justice. Tunbridgeware involves making a mosaic of many small pieces of colored wood, then thinly slicing them with a very fine saw.
This is the most similar one I could find on Ebay UK, its around $330AUD
I paid $130 for mine, so I am guessing it was a reasonably good buy.
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Nice score and a bargain price , there certainly are some nice wood boxes around , thanks for posting .
My pleasure Glad someone liked it.
I actually bought it in a bakery of all places.
Tunbridgeware amazes me. Apart from all the glueing of tiny pieces of individual timber, I would love to know how they managed to slice it that thin ! You would need some sort of laser guided saw these days.
You are also right in that there are some lovely timber boxes around. Certainly nothing comes close to the beauty of handmade stuff from the 1800's.
I love rummaging around old stores in the middle of nowhere, you never know what you shall find. I do pickups and deliveries for our local secondhand shop on occasion and often get to see the good stuff before it hits the shelves. They do have an idea what it is they are getting, but never over charge for the stuff, so you can always get a good bargain. I recently got an old cut crystal "chandelier" (for want of a better term) for $20. It was in pieces when I bought it and I was thinking that I could make a nice light for our bathroom out of it. 4 hours later after stripping, cleaning and re-wiring it. I reassemble it only to find that it was all there! It now has pride of place over our bathroom mirror and is probably worth several hundred dollars in the right auction.
As for Tunbridgeware, I doubt that I'd have the patience to even try building something like that, although I'd love something like it. Well bought, that man!
Probably unlikely, but does anyone know what a key for this box might look like ?
There are lots of keys on ebay, but I dont really want to keep buying them until I find the right one
I'm guessing that it is likely to be a small version of the standard wardrobe type key.
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
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