Relic Oak Goblet Turned November 1862 from a House Built c. 1702, 10 North Street, 1862

The Piece

A small turned oak goblet with a story written on its foot: a paper label in brown ink, in a hand of the period, reads Turned November 1862, 160 yrs the age of the house, 10 North St. It is a piece of relic treen, a keepsake turned from the timber of an old house when it came down, the cup and the label made at the same moment so that whoever kept it would know what it was. The goblet is turned from a single block of quartersawn oak, the bowl a deep flaring cup with a thin lip, the stem a short baluster with a bead and a ring, the foot a stepped and domed disc, and the whole surface alive with the silver ray fleck that only oak cut on the quarter shows. The wood has darkened over a century and a half to a warm chestnut with a dry, soft sheen, the inside of the bowl showing the turner's rings, the underside of the foot the growth rings of a timber that was already old when George II was king.

Condition is very good for a piece of its age: no cracks, chips or repairs, the lip intact, the foot flat and true, the surface with the gentle wear and handling of a cabinet piece rather than a used cup. The label is complete, legible and firmly adhered, with light toning. Offered as found, uncleaned and unwaxed.

History & Provenance

The habit of turning keepsakes from the wood of a vanished building is as old as the lathe. When the Shakespeare mulberry was felled at Stratford in 1756 its wood became goblets and snuffboxes by the hundred; when Old Ironsides was refitted, her oak became canes and boxes; when the great houses, meeting houses and elm trees of New England and old England came down in the nineteenth century, the local turner was there to make something from the beams, and the result, a small goblet, a cup, a candlestick, a box, with a note of what it was and when, passed into the family cabinet and became the kind of object that antiquarians call relic ware. It is history you can hold, and the label is what makes it: without the note, this is a pretty treen goblet; with it, it is the last of a house.

The note tells us that in November 1862 a house at 10 North Street, then a hundred and sixty years old and therefore built about 1702, was taken down or opened up, and that someone thought enough of it to turn a goblet from its oak and record the fact. North Street is a name shared by old towns on both sides of the Atlantic, from Salem, Boston, Portsmouth and Litchfield to a hundred English market towns, and a house of 1702 would have been among the oldest in any of them. Research has not yet fixed which town this was; the house records of Salem and Litchfield do not show a 10 North Street of that date, and the hunt continues in newspapers of 1862. The goblet surfaced in Carson City, Nevada, which in November 1862 was a town four years old and the capital of a territory not yet a state, with nothing in it a tenth the age of the house on the label; whatever 10 North Street was, it stood in an older country, in New England or in England, and the cup came west with someone who carried it as a piece of home. The goblet is offered as documented relic treen with the house unlocated, and any buyer with a North Street in the family is invited to inquire.

The dating rests on the label and the construction rather than style alone: the inscription fixes the turning to November 1862 and the timber to about 1702, and the quartersawn oak, the hand turning and the period hand are consistent with it. The piece is dated 1862.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the small object that holds a shelf together: a dark oak cup on a desk, a mantel, a bookcase or a bedside table, among brass, leather, pewter and old paper, with a story that takes thirty seconds to tell and never gets old. It holds a few pens, a posy, a pair of reading glasses or nothing at all. It belongs in a study, a library, a collector's cabinet, a cottage or a house that is itself old, and it is the gift for the person who loves old houses, the historian, the woodworker or the family that has just restored one. For a shop or designer client it is the documented, dated, hand-made antique accent that anchors a vignette of smalls and sells on the label.