Antique trunk

Hi I was wondering if anybody would be able to help me with any info on an old trunk I found. Any information at all such as where it could be from should I restore it is it worth restoring or will I ruin it any value it looks amazing to me but I just don't know much about it

 

And I can't figure out how to post the pictures lol

 

Knee jerk its a later reproduction,but I could be way off. Definitely worth saving.

 

You may want to edit your heading. What you have is a chest, not a trunk.

Debora

 

When we read 'trunk' we tend to think steamer trunk. Debora is right that this would be better described as a carved wooden chest.

Maybe a member here with a membership at ancestry.com can check what it says about the Claus Ahmling listed here. Not at all my area of expertise, but strikes me as being genuinely quite old; whether as old as 1797...? Maybe the year the business was founded? Are the compass rose decorations inlaid?

 

This looks like it could be the real deal. I would not do anything to this until you know what you have. Assuming it to be real, all you would want to do is clean it and apply a paste wax. You should have the missing foot replicated as well. Lastly, get it out of that damp basement.

 

just looking at others with the anno and year, they are dowry chests.
It’s difficult to tell from photo, but it looks like and mark between the names. Maybe these are two last names.

 

Beautiful.
I don't think Claus Ahmling would have had a dowry, same sex marriage acceptance and legalization issues (and worse).
We would call this a blanket chest. I think that is a pretty international term?

 

I have my grandmother's 'hope chest', the term in the US for a long time. As girls got proficient at needlework, they began to hem & embroider, pillow cases, tea towels, etc., & place them in the chest in the hope of getting married, at least that was the idea. Not too different from a dowry chest, methinks.

Lane was a major purveyor. I have a miniature one, a promotional item of theirs, that belonged to my mother.

P.S. - This is not to be missed.

 

Yes, that would be a dowry chest. Wonderful that you have it, any of the original contents still there?

 

It used to be in my grandparents' second bedroom, where my mother & I slept on visits. I would always ask my grandmother to open it for me, I loved to look inside, but I don't think much of anything that was there by that time was from whatever it originally held. Now it has my grandmother's wedding dress - a rather flapper-ish affair, not a long white gown - the metronome my mother had for piano practice, my baby book, assorted things like that. The miniature one is full of rocks.

 

This 1909 newspaper article refers to them as 'bridal chests' & encourages girls to carve their own. The description of the process probably does not differ much from the way Claus did this one.