Elizabeth I oak box

Elizabeth I carved box of large proportions. The elaborate carved ornament and close-grained riven timber used in of this box indicate a construction date in the late sixteenth century. The complex gadrooning that covers the front and side boards is a pattern that, with minor variations, appears frequently on Elizabethan furniture and fixed woodwork from the English South West. Timber of the quality that appears in the box is unusual in all but the highest level of seventeenth-century oak furniture. The box was thus made during a time at which simply constructed, rectangular lift-top boxes were perceived as stylish the sixteenth century. Eighteenth-century black paint. Lockplate and hinges replaced in the eighteenth century.