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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;James Conrad, post: 1027740, member: 5066&quot;]Another thing that is worth pointing out, this Frisian inspired chip carving TRAVELED, A LOT! We know it traveled to America because the largest ethnic group in New Amsterdam (now New York City) were Frisian people. And if it traveled here it&#039;s a fair bet it traveled all over western europe, it absolutely traveled to Wales.</p><p>Check out this box dated June 28, 1660, i don&#039;t think i have ever seen a box dated to the day/month/year the way this one is. The Welshman who carved this box THOUGHT he was getting married but something went awry somewhere!</p><p><br /></p><p>A dealers description of this box</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;The desk box is intricately carved on all surfaces, including the interior drawers. It’s wonderful, but the real kicker is on the back -– two interlaced hearts, with the name and date, &quot;Charles Fitzhugh, June 28, 1660.</p><p>Chip-carved boxes are thought to have been love or marriage tokens, and the tradition was particularly strong in Wales (as well as in the Friesian Islands off the Netherlands). Fitzhugh is a name of Welsh origin (meaning &quot;son of Hugh&quot;), so we can surmise that Charles was a Welshman, and probably from an important family. (There is a Fitzhugh family who owned a huge estate in Montgomery and Denbighshire from 1596–1921.)</p><p>Chip-carving was done by amateurs using the point of a knife -- a tool every young man would have had. Basically, it required three cuts per chip, though many chips on this box would have taken five or six cuts. Typically the quality of the decoration far exceeded that of the form, which is usually fairly simple (this is more sophisticated than most). We can only assume that the time spent chipping out the decoration was a measure of the young man’s love, and in this case, Charles must have been very deeply in love indeed! The precision of the date, June 28, 1660, suggests that he intended the box to commemorate his marriage, but, and here a note of romantic tragedy creeps in, he never carved his beloved’s name in the space he left for it. Did she leave him tearful at the altar? Did her proud father refuse to let her marry the unworthy Charles? Did a jealous rival carry her off at midnight? There’s a tear-jerker of a story lying just under the surface here. What a shame that Shakespeare died half a century earlier; Romeo and Juliet might not have been his last word on the tribulations of young love.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]207702[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]207703[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]207704[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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