Object Description
This is an antique Victorian coromandel scent bottle box of domed form with elaborate decorative brass mounts with inset attractive pietra dura cabochons, circa 1860 in date.
The domed lid reveals three cut glass bottles with stoppers.
The box has a working lock with key.
Provenance: The Dr. Lawrie Webster Collection of Boxes
This is a highly decorative piece which will make a statement once placed on any period desk.
Provenance:
The Collection of Sir Jeremy Lever.
Condition:
In excellent condition, please see photos for confirmation.
Dimensions in cm:
Height 16 x Width 23.5 x Depth 11.5
Dimensions in inches:
Height 6.3 x Width 9.3 x Depth 4.5
Coromandel wood or Calamander wood
is a valuable wood from India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. It is of a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar Ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus; one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name Calamander comes from the local sinhalese name, ‘kalu-medhiriya’, which means dark chamber; referring to the characteristic ebony black wood.
Coromandel wood has been logged to extinction over the last 2 to 3 hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in coromandel is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source. A substitute, Macassar Ebony, has similar characteristics and to the untrained eye is nearly the same but it lacks the depth of colour seen in genuine Coromandel.
Our reference: 09385