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Box
Unknown - Enlarge image
Box
- Place of origin:
England, Great Britain (made)
- Date:
1670-1680 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Silver, stamped
- Credit Line:
Purchased with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund
- Museum number:
T.456 to B-1990
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 56d, case 6
Object Type
This tiny box was among the contents of an embroidered casket used by a young girl, Martha Edlin, to store her small personal possessions. It contains 19 items now, although it may have held more originally : 8 trenchers, 6 spoons and 5 triangular salts, typical items from a table setting of the 1670s. Their minute size would have made them difficult to play with, even for a child, and they may have been intended for a doll's house.
People
A group of Martha Edlin's (1660-1725) possessions from her childhood, including this box and its contents, were kept in the casket, cherished by her descendants and passed down through the female line in her family for over three hundred years. We know little about her life, except that she married a man called Richard Richmond and appears to have been a prosperous widow, with daughters and grandchildren, living in Pinner in Greater London at the time she drew up her will.
