Carved Red Cedar Dresser Box with Thatched Cottage Print, Footed, c. 1925–1945

The Piece

An American dresser box of aromatic red cedar from between the wars, the souvenir and gift box of the Smoky Mountain cedar trade at its most ambitious, with a carved lid, carved sides, carved feet and a color lithograph of a thatched cottage set into the top. The lid is a shallow dome with a rectangular reserve let into it, framed by a run of carved bead and reel molding and four stepped sunburst corners, and the reserve holds a printed scene of a half-timbered cottage under a thatched roof with a chimney, a garden path, roses and hollyhocks and a big tree at the left, the picture that every cedar box of the period carried in one version or another. The sides of the base are carved all around with a band of tall lancet leaves, the Gothic arcade that the cedar shops cut with a gouge in a single pass, and the box stands on four block feet carved with the same lancet motif, each one set under the corner like a tiny capital turned upside down.

The lid lifts on two small brass hinges and closes with a stepped brass hasp and loop at the front, the Deco-profile hardware the cedar trade used in the 1930s. Inside, the box is the wood itself: the lid shows the red and cream streaks of eastern red cedar with its knots and its scent, and the well is floored and walled in the same wood, with a band of royal blue felt along the rim where the lid closes, which is how these boxes were finished so the lid shut quietly. The whole exterior is under a thick glossy varnish that has ambered with age and gives the carving its depth.

The box is sound and square and the lid sits true. The lithograph has toned and shows a scatter of brown foxing spots across the sky at the upper left, which is usual for the prints on these boxes and reads as age; the varnish has fine crazing and a few small chips at the edges; the felt is worn through at a few points along the rim; and one hinge screw has been replaced. The carving is complete, with no losses to the leaves or the feet.

History & Provenance

The small carved cedar box with a picture on the lid is one of the signatures of the American souvenir trade between the wars. The cedar mills of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park opening at their door in the 1930s, turned the offcuts of the cedar chest industry into boxes for gloves, handkerchiefs, jewelry and letters, carved them on the sides with gouge-cut leaf bands, set a color print of a cottage, a landscape or a pair of lovers into the lid, and sold them from the roadside stands and gift shops along the new tourist highways, sometimes with the name of the town or the park stamped on the print. They went home in car trunks across the whole country, sat on dressers for a generation, and the aromatic cedar kept what was inside them fresh. The thatched cottage with a flower garden was the favorite subject, borrowed from the English cottage prints that were everywhere in the 1920s.

No maker's mark is present and the box is offered as an unattributed American cedar box of the souvenir trade. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the aromatic red cedar, the gouge-carved lancet band and sunburst corners, the inset color lithograph, the felt rim, the stepped brass hasp and the ambered varnish are all consistent with manufacture between about 1925 and 1945.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the box that sits on a dresser or a nightstand and takes the jewelry, the letters, the cufflinks or the spare keys, and smells of cedar every time it is opened. The warm amber color and the little cottage make it a natural for a cottage, farmhouse or collected interior, and it reads as a piece of American folk craft on a bookshelf or a console beside brass, linen and old books. For a shop or designer client it is the complete, well carved, pictured cedar box that cottagecore and vintage buyers look for, with the carving on four sides and the feet that the plainer examples never had.