Box

The most common small storage unit in the seventeenth century was the rectangular box with a hinged lid. Boxes provided a place to keep valuables, documents, writing implements, books, and small articles of apparel. Except for one rare example decorated with applied moldings, these boxes are carved utilizing a vocabulary of stylized plant forms and simple geometric shapes. The boxes are all of simple five-board nailed construction and have a deep association with America’s so-called "Pilgrim Century." They were avidly sought after by the earliest collectors of seventeenth-century American oak furniture, hence their acquisition by the museum in 1910 as part of the foundation for the museum’s collection of early American furniture.