The cedar chest, hope chest or trunk may well be as many furniture historians believe, the first true piece of furniture. From it, most certainly, evolved the chest of drawers. The box called a trunk or chest was a common sense and practical structure. This wooden framed box was built to store and move personal possessions and it could also be used as a seat or a table. Trunk shapes ranged from the rounded vessels found on Conestoga wagon trains or flat topped and sided for extra storage space like the steamer trunks on ships. Although the shape has varied slightly over the centuries, the concept remains steady.

Every era of history and virtually every culture have some sort of trunk or chest. From Africa to Scandinavia communities built their own form of mobile container for storing and moving personal possessions. Some cultures made very plain and functional boxes while some like the Swedes were heavily decorated. Trunks were flat top to domed, plain or embellished with metal work and leather strappings, upholstered or painted. Some trunks went so far as to document its own history in signatures, dates and heavy decoration.

From the fall of Rome to contemporary retailers trunks have held everything from bolts of silk cloth from the Orient traveling from city to city, or parcels of linen for ladies in waiting, to scarce books coming to print after the end of the Dark Ages and Gutenberg’s printing press made reading a possibility for the masses. Today it may hold an inherited quilt, a family Bible or a little boy’s baseball card collection.

The trunk or the chest, especially made out of insect repelling cedar is still a very sought after a functional piece of furniture whether as storage, a bench at the foot of a bed or a coffee table. The Amish crafted cedar chest is perfect as a baby shower gift – a symbol of a long life of memories to collect. As a symbol of memories to share, young singles and newly married couples still list a hope chest to store their future heirlooms or prize possessions for their new homes on gift registries. Every fall students move out of the parental nest and off to university dormitories on campuses around the world. Most of the students have one thing in common and that is that they packed their homes into storage trunks or chests.

These pieces of portable furniture can hold anything from spare socks to secret dreams and have held a place in history for centuries. In oak, maple, hickory or cherry there are over a dozen designs from Mission style to classic the Amish still design and craft these solid wood time capsules to be enjoyed today and handed down tomorrow.

Tags: Amish, Cedar Chests, Chests, history of trunks, hope chests, trunks

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 1:52 am and is filed under Amish Furniture Styles, Cedar Chests & Trunks, History of Furniture Making, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.