Chip box
Wooden boxes (also chip cans , cover boxes ) are small, usually oval, mostly painted container from softwood which to store valuables (eg. As jewelry and documents), toys (eg. As pewter figures ), objects of popular piety (eg. B. rosaries or crib figures ) or smaller everyday objects were used. Very thinly split or sawn softwood is used as veneer (which is referred to here as chipboard ).
Chip boxes were often part of a bride's dowry and feature bridal couples or wedding-related inscriptions as a motif; such boxes are also called "bridal boxes". The originally southern German custom came in the 16./17. Century also to central and northern Germany. The boxes were also popular well into the 20th century as a baptism gift from godparents or as a gift among lovers.
Chip boxes were also used as commercial packaging (e.g. for toys or pharmacy products). Chip boxes were also used as hat boxes .
Specialized chip box manufacturers and box painters were mainly located in wooded regions of southern Germany, for example in Berchtesgaden ( Berchtesgaden War ), in Franconia and in the Black Forest (where clock painters also painted chip boxes), but also in the Ore Mountains , the Thuringian Forest and Lower Silesia . The box industry in County Glatz developed into the market leader in the production of sliding chip boxes for matches, so-called Swedish pushers .
In Switzerland, Frutenland is particularly well known for its chip box tradition. The Swiss Chip Box Museum is located in Frutigen .
In the USA, the shakers are especially known for making oval chip boxes, so-called shaker boxes .
Painted chip boxes are considered objects of folk art and are a popular collector's item.
Chip box with a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, made in Thuringia or Bohemia, around 1810
Commercial packaging for Nuremberg apothecary weights , after 1825. With engraved label. Focke Museum Bremen
Lauenburg chip boxes for storing wedding hoods, 18th century, drawing around 1895
Shaker brother Ricardo Belden makes chip boxes in a workshop in the Shaker Village of Hancock, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
literature
- Kurt Dröge, Lothar Pretzell: Painted chip boxes. History, manufacture, meaning . Callwey, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7667-0812-0
- Kurt Dröge (Ed.): Chip boxes. Collectors and collections . (= Materials & studies on everyday history and folk culture in Lower Saxony; H. 34). Museumsdorf, Cloppenburg 2003, ISBN 3-923675-93-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Margaret Bernhard: The box industry in the timber industry in the county Glatz . L. Simion, 1906, p. 76ff.