Featured Gentleman's Writing Box. 'S. Neaverson, 1886'.

Yesterday's flea market find:




Original owner + date of purchase/commemoration.


Unsharpened woodcase pencil. Original to the box. Ivory page-turner (my addition). Sterling silver dip pen. S. Mordan & Co. (my addition).

The key in the pen tray, I cut and filed that myself. Very proud of my efforts! Works perfectly.


Closeup, showing compartments for papers etc. This whole top panel folds into the lid and locks into place when the box is closed. It pops out like this at the press of a spring-loaded catch at the back of the lid. Very nifty.


Top and bottom writing-leaves open and shut smoothly. No damage. The inkwell in the top right corner is original to the box. It was one of the factors that pushed me towards buying the box. Finding original inkwells is damn hard.


Full writing slope. There is some black adhesive tape across the fold in the box to reinforce the hinge (not my doing). other than that, the box is in great condition and fully functional.



The key I cut for the lock. The notch in the head is to bypass the ward that comes before the lever.

 

That is impressive!

 

Very nice.

And might I add that your photographs are so well done (lighting-wise, perspective-wise, and neutral-background-wise).

 

NICE find and NICE work!!

 

All around awesome. It's a perfect mix of original stuff and new stuff that blends in subtly.
You MADE a key? Are you a locksmith? How do people MAKE KEYS?
And... I love your "underage antiques" tag!

 

Very nice !!!

 

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.

To GalleriaG:

Nothing that I put into the box is 'new'. Everything there is an antique. A period-correct replacement to what *would* have been included in the box when it was new.

And yes, I made a key. Ideally, I would've liked to pull the lock apart and cut a key that way, but that wasn't possible with this box. (Well probably is, but I didn't want to damage the box). So I had to size up the dimensions of the key by peeking through the keyhole.

The first step was to figure out the dimensions of the key barrel to fit around the post and turn. This is the easiest step. It either fits, or it don't.

The second step was to measure the dimensions of the bit at the end of the barrel. This of course, is dictated by the size of the keyhole. So I filed the key-head down until it was the right size to sorta-fit-in.

The third step is one I almost screwed up - and that was cutting the notch for the ward. I wouldn't be able to photograph this (I almost couldn't see it myself without a bright torchlight!), but inside the lock is a ward (an obstruction) which the key has to BYPASS in order to open the lock.

The trick is to cut a notch in the key-head to bypass the ward, but at the same time, filing down the OTHER side of the key-head, to fit into the lock properly. You have to take off JUST the right amount of metal on both sides, or else the key just snaps in half.

It was tricky, but I got there in the end.

The final step is to hammer on a new escutcheon for the keyhole and line it up with the lock. Gonna go to an antiques hardware shop and see what they got.

The 'Underage Antiques Collector' is because I got into antiques at a very, very, very young age. I was five years old when I started visiting antiques shops on a regular basis. I'm not even 30 yet.

No, I am NOT a locksmith!!

 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... I totally get the no-new-parts thing... it's equivalent to replacing missing parts on a 1952 Harley with authentic 1952 parts... cool.

I believe that you're not a locksmith... I think! Naw, I believe ya.

You were indeed precocious...

And you can call me Gila, if you like. That's pronounced Hee-luh... like the monster.

 

The biggest reason I bought this box (apart from its overall condition and the price) is because of the presence of its original inkwell.

Far, far, FAR too often, you buy these old boxes, and their inkwells are LONG GONE.

The moment fountain pens showed up, boxes like these were like 1st generation laptop computers - you chucked them out and never used them again. But the inkwells were still important - so people saved the inkwells and threw the boxes in the bin. As a result, the inkwell and the key is often the first things to go missing.

A missing key you can have re-cut. A missing inkwell? Good luck finding that. They're almost impossible to dig up. In over 20 years of dabbling in antiques, I've only ever seen two for sale, and you can bet I snatched those up as fast as possible. I broke them apart, resealed the joints to stop them leaking...and I still have them.

The pencil in this box is an untouched original. I'm not sure how old it is. My guess is sometime from the 1890s-1900s. The ivory page-turner was something else that I added in. I also included the sterling silver dip pen shaft. It's made by the Sampson Mordan company, which was a silversmithing and writing-instrument manufactury based in London. From the 1820s or 1830s, until the Second World War, S. Mordan & Co produced thousands...millions...of sterling silver (and I believe, gold) dip pens, pencils, combinations, of all sorts of styles and designs.

The factory was heavily damaged in 1941. It was blown apart by the German Luftwaffe during the Blitz, and the Mordan Family just couldn't afford to rebuild after the war, so the company foundered thereafter.

 

Thank you for the course in writing boxes... never heard of them before. Now, if I see one, I'll know what to look for. Ya never know, now that these people here have me going to every house-sale I see. Wait a minute... now you're one of them.

 

I wouldn't say that's a 'course'. More like an opener.

 

An appetizer. We can agree.

 

Good work!

 

Taking the box to an antiques hardware shop tomorrow to try and tack on a new escutcheon for the keyhole.

 

Got the hardware that I need for the lock. Now I gotta nail it on, once I have the right sized nails. Dad says they're somewhere downstairs, so I'll wait until tonight to do it.

 

Nice item, I'm now curious about Mr. Neaverson, the box may have been a retirement gift when he retired as warden of Newgate prison or something like that (made-up example of course.)

 

I have absolutely NO idea who Mr. Neaverson is (I assume it's a Mr. I don't see a lady owning a box like this).

If anyone should come across a Mr. S. Neaverson who was around the 1880s, it might well belong to him.

I suspect that something like this was more likely to be given to a man upon a PROMOTION rather than a retirement. If he was expected to do a lot of travelling in a new job, then a gift like a writing box would've made a lot of sense.

BTW. The box is now finished. Will be posting pictures.

 

S. Neaverson lived down under.

 

Well, I found one record of the box, that it was sold in auction back in October:

https://auctions.leonardjoel.com.au...alelot=LJW8099+4299+&refno=40381398&saletype=

...but nothing else beyond that.


Got the new escutcheon on. Nailed it in place. I also reinforced the hinge with black adhesive tape, and sewed up the hinge to give it just that little bit of extra reinforcement.

Is it sightly? Perhaps not. But it IS the only way to repair these things. I speak from years of experience looking at broken writing boxes. The only other alternative would be to rip off ALL THE LEATHER (inside and out) and reline the ENTIRE THING ALL OVER AGAIN.

I don't want to see what the cost for that is!



I've been blacking the original leather with shoe-polish and cleaning up all the grime.



The inside of the box. Looking very sharp and clean



There's another strip of black adhesive tape across the hinge here, too. This wasn't done by me - it was there when I bought it - but I did reinforce it with extra tape and thread, because the box was falling apart when I was carrying it home.

 

It's beautiful, Shangas! You do very nice work!

BTW - it was "offered" at that auction but was not sold.