Mystery Box

Anyone have any knowledge of the person on this box, or the place and time this was most likely made. Any information would be helpful, I know absolutely nothing about it. I purchased it a month ago at a auction for $6.

 

Hmmmm.
Magellan?
Columbus?

 

I just found out who the guy is by searching "17th century king with really big hat"
The painting is called "laughing cavalier." Here is a article about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Cavalier

 

The picture looks familiar. Maybe a famous Painting? What is the map on the inside of? That may help

 

Sniped by those smarter and quicker then me! LOL

 

Is there anything printed/written on the bottom?
Just looking at the pics, I'd guess a fancy cigar box.

 

Hi Joshua -

May I suggest that you start giving measurements with your items.
A bowl can be a berry bowl, soup bowl, serving bowl or a punch bowl, but we can't tell you what kind of bowl without a size. Same applies to your box.

lauragarnet is suggesting a cigar box, yet I see an art supply box. So without size it could be either.

Moving on.
I think your box was decoupaged probably in the 70s.
The box itself is most likely older.

 

You didn't see that huge glaring dime in his 3rd photo I guess.

 

Most of us aren't talented enough to do the MacGyver method of calculating measurements by rolling the dime in our imagination the way you can.

 

Some of us are foreign and don't have dimes.

The Laughing Cavalier was everywhere a cheesy image was needed in the late 50s and early 60s, biscuit tins, chocolate boxes, oil cans, you name it.

The cavaliers were admired because they lost the Civil War but had such great clothes.The continued to be revered until Vauxhall Motors named a rustbucket of a car, the Cavalier. Since then they fell into obscurity.

 

The painting is only nicknamed 'the laughing cavalier'.
The subject is by no means a cavalier, but probably a member of a local guild or town militia.
The painting is by Frans Hals, and painted when The Netherlands were a republic. There were no cavaliers, most of the country was governed by what the Dutch call 'patricians'. Even today Dutch patrician families are generally held in higher regard than the few aristocrats, because they are the ones that created The Netherlands.

 

How big is a dime?
How many dimes make up the width, the height, and the depth?
That is beyond my scope of imagination at the end of the day, or early in the morning before I've had my 2 cups of coffee.

 

Ha!
I started to offer this yesterday.
Open the photo. Put a ruler on your screen and see. Then compute how many of those would fit across.
Or...
Perhaps we need to start a fund to pay those that want help to give us what we need to help them...

 

Not to argue a point, but the Cavilers took refuge/exile in the Netherlands, and William of Orange (Stadtholder of much of what is now the Netherlands) eventually became king of England. There is a deep connection between the English Cavaliers and the Netherlands.

 

It looks like either cigars or chocolates, but with those studs and the studly dude on top, odds on cigars. Are there any marks on the bottom? Cigar boxes often have tax stamps and other information impressed into the underside of the box.

 

The painting was painted in 1624, long before stadhouder Willem/king William was born in 1650. In those days there was no connection between the Dutch and British Royalists.
The Stuart and cavalier connection came much later, it dates from 1642, when William's Dutch father married a Stuart princess Mary.
The English civil war was from 1642-1651. Refugees came long after the portrait was painted.

 

Oi! I had five Cavaliers, all company cars, and they were brilliant. I was doing 50,000 miles a year in them. MInd you, that did mean an oil change every three months.

One of mine got tuned up by my engineers, who got bored one lunchtime. Unbadged fuel injected 2 litres it was. Looked nothing. I took fiendish joy in foot hard down away at traffic lights, much to the consternation of boy racers in Capri Ghias and Escort RS Turbos. Said company also had a dozen of those latter: every damn one written off within six months....

Happy days.

 

I had a '98 that I broke awhile back. My fault.
It was a great car and I will soon find another. The 2200 is a better engine than the 2400 because the 2400 has a belt instead of the 2200's timing chain.

 

My first car was an '82 Chevrolet Cavalier, aka a riding lawn mower with enclosed cab. It had four cylinders, two of which were used to run the air conditioner if on. You couldn't run the A/C and go up a hill at the same time. Poor thing died of a cracked cylinder head eventually. It sounds like a totally different Cav, by about 50 horsepower.