If These Shirts Could Talk: The Tantalizing Tales Behind Used Clothes
Jockeying for Position: How Boxers and Briefs Got Into Men's Pants
Gloriously Grotesque 19th-Century Pipes
In the Hot Seat: Is Your Antique Windsor a Fake?
Love at First Kite: How Pizza and Pente Led to One Oklahoman's High-Flying Obsession
Blood, Sweat, and Steel: My Afternoon with the Ace of Swords
'The Great Gatsby' Still Gets Flappers Wrong
Say Ahhh: An Oral Surgeon's Quest to Reimagine the Garage-Band Guitar
Forget TV Pickers, Meet the Real Mavericks of the Antiques World
Coveting The Craziest Cat-People Collectibles
Posted 8 months ago
myoldkyhome
(9 items)
I bought this old trunk from a private person and paid $60. I don't know how old it is or who made it.
It has metal on the outside and has a center section that has a moon and stars pattern on stamped tin. The stamped tin is painted with a white background and a peach/pink color on the moons and stars. The inside of it has paper on it. The exterior of the trunk is scratched but otherwise in good condition. I don't know if the stamped tin would have been the colors that it is currently painted or if someone else has painted them at some point.
TrunksAntique trunks, also called traveling chests, were originally used as lugga…
Nice trunk -- great buy! Probably made in the early 1900's. I doubt that those colors would be original to the trunk.
Yeah. I was thinking that it probably would be unlikely that those colors were original, but I'm just starting to learn about trunks. I assume the original would have been gold or silver and then some other color.
Some were stained colors and others were just the tin as is -- usually as a varnish of some sort. I love the star and moon pattern and have seen it on only two trunks I can recall. Yours is in really good condition.
I have actually seen the two tone painting on the embossed tin as orginal. The base is normally some shade of silver, but the raised colors could have varied greatly, as I have seen red, gold and a green. The moon and stars pattern is pretty hard to find in good condition. You made a great purchase.
My mother took my grandmothers trunk (just like this one) from her basement, and decided to take it home and fix it up. So that was my first foray into rescuing something unwanted and turning it into exactly like this trunk. I forgot how much I missed it till I saw this photo, beautiful piece !~
Years later I bought a trunk just like this one. It had the exact same stars and still had the original red paint on it, stars, and all. I paid around 60 also. Actually more like 10, but at that time our money was worth something ! I loved the trunks, easily becoming my favourites and now all those moves I made with it, were worth every bit of trouble !~Phil.
Boonsborotrunks is correct in the two tone painting of the tin, with the relief a different color -- it makes a great contrast. Whoever did yours did a nice job by bringing out the relief of the pattern. Often I find the trays missing in these so bonus to have it there.
love it -- thanks for loving my old camel back -- i am going to go outside the flow on the comments as to whether the paint is original or has been refurbished -- looking at your first pic -- i can not see any paint on any of the stays -- and paint does what paint does best -- goes everywhere but where it is intended to go -- ergo -- i think yours is the original paint