Early, Beautifully Detailed Carved Out Slide Lid Box homemade book Three of them are carved

Three of them are carved with crosshatching at the wide end so would have been used as wax seals

was finished with a hardened varnish or shellac and bears a great rich patina

I'm completely smitten with them

The entries are numbered to correspond to days of the month

but it looks like the nails were removed at some point at the strips were glued (though there is no glue showing

Early, Beautifully Detailed Carved Out Slide Lid Box homemade book Three of them are carvedThis is quite an old box, I believe earlyish 19th c. if not older, and quite a wonderful one I think, carved out from one piece of wood, with a great deal of effort invested in decorative carving on the long sides cross hatching on one and a more complex pattern of chip carving on the other. I love the raised pull end of the slide lid, which looks rather like a pillow at the head of a bed, with a piece of iron stretched over the top looking rather