- Valuables Box
- Spice Box
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The Pennsylvania spice box, like the Rococo high chest, represents the persistence of one form after it had gone out of fashion elsewhere. Spice boxes are known in England and America as early as the seventeenth century and remained popular through the first quarter of the eighteenth century. In the Delaware Valley, specifically Philadelphia and Chester County, they continued to be made throughout the 1700s. The Bayou Bend example is compelling for its juxtaposition of Early and Late Baroque as well as Rococo elements.
Book excerpt: Warren, David B., Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
Provenance[David Stockwell (1907–1996), Philadelphia, 1948] [1]; purchased by Ima Hogg, 1948; given to MFAH, by 1966.
[1] An accompanying tag states the box was acquired from Ira S. Reed, who obtained it from the Caldwell family of Philadelphia and Gap.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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