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Large Painted Pine Dowry Box
Ref: 1693
A particularly good antique painted pine box or painted chest.
As the inscription in the interior reveals this chest was given to a girl, Katalin, or Koti (english: Kate), as a Christmas present from her mother.
It reads literally "Kasler Koti in sweet remembrance my mother December 25 1909". Probably the daughter would use this box to store her finest clothes, linens, belongings, until one day she got married and the box would be removed to her new home.
Sometimes these boxes have two names and one can assume they are presented at the point of engagement or marriage.
This one is not but could still be described as a dowry chest.
The ethnic origin is Hungarian and so could have come from modern day Ukraine, the Balkans, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia as Hungarians lived in all of these places prior to the 1st World War. The love-heart decoration on the front resembles chests from the eastern most point of Europe and brought over to Canada by settlers in the 1920s.
It is a good piece as it is in such good condition in its overall fabric and in the paint decoration and also because it is larger than normal. The bottom section has been restored and the feet are an addition (they can be removed to make it lower and have the box as a coffee table though it can still be a coffee table as is or end of bed piece).
Austrian Empire c.1909
SOLD
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