Sewing Box

Ken was gathering some things from the garage to take home with him when I saw this "workbox." I immediatly recognized it as a sewing box that mom had when I was little, or as my students would say, "Don't you mean littler, Ms. Taylor?" Anyway, I remember playing with it a lot. When I brought it home, it was painted with a faux finish of brown streaks over a coat of dark yellow. I stripped the paint off and am now down to the bare wood in places. It's in pretty fragile condition, some cracks, some repaired , some not. Any way I have had some good memories and sad memories of mom as I've worked on it and am anxious to finish taking off the old "finish" to put on a new finish. I'm thinking of hand rubbed tung oil.

I had noticed right away the brand on the bottom and thought that there should be a way to trace the patent and find out more about it. It is a tribute to summer vacation laziness, that I, a librarian took 2 weeks to realize that I just had to look on the US Patent Office website to find it. http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html If you use this link and the number 1707806, you can find a picture of the patent papers. It was given a patent on April 4, 1927. (on the search page, change the date box to 1790 to present) It was patented because of the unique nature of the now missing hinge feature that automatically closed one lid when you opened the other lid. I remember playing with the lids quite a bit, that's probably why. And come to think of it, that's probably why the hinge is missing now.

I haven't been able to decipher the chalk marks on the bottom though. I'll post a picture of the finished product. Don't wait up for it though, I'm working on the legs right now and it could take a while longer than I think. Lots of turns with lots of paint stuck in them.