What wood are Victorian jewellery boxes made from?

Walnut dominates, in a fifth of all titles on Sellingantiques, and it arrives in named grades: burr, figured and blonde. Rosewood is second, then mahogany and coromandel. Beyond those, the archive throws up amboyna, kingwood, satinwood, calamander, thuya, olive wood, apple wood, laburnum oyster and burr yew, usually as veneer over a carcase.

Why are sewing boxes listed as jewellery boxes?

Because about a fifth of the category was made for another job. Sewing, work, dressing, vanity and writing boxes all appear, along with glove boxes and tea caddies described as now serving as jewellery boxes. The forms are close cousins. Purpose-made jewellery boxes developed alongside the work box, the dressing case and the writing slope, and share the same veneers, brass binding and tray-fitted interiors. So the heading often describes present use rather than original purpose.

How old are these boxes usually?

The dealers' dated field runs from 1800 to 1950, with 443 of 992 listings carrying a clean year. Victorian is the single biggest label at 244. Decade labels cluster in the 1880s, 1860s, 1900s, 1890s and 1870s, with a smaller 1920s group. A good number are given only as '19th Century', which is a bracket rather than a date, and Regency and Georgian appear the same way. A scatter of 17th- and 18th-century pieces sits outside that range, including Welsh oak chip-carved and olive wood lace boxes.

Are jewellery boxes ever signed by a maker?

Rarely. Only one name clears three dealers across the whole archive, Lund of Cornhill, and a handful of other London retailer names appear from a single dealer each. Where a name does show, it comes as a stamp or a trade label inside the lid, or as an attribution in the description with nothing on the box itself.

What is a casket as opposed to a box?

In these listings, much the same thing. 'Casket' appears in 115 titles and often signals a domed or metal-mounted lid rather than a flat one. The word travels with the French group: ormolu and bevelled glass, gilt bronze, silvered copper, porcelain and Limoges enamel.

How many come up for sale each year?

Around 104 a year on Sellingantiques, and 187 different dealers have offered one. That spread tells you something. This is a category handled across the whole trade rather than held by a few specialists, so what appears in any given month is mixed in timber, origin and size.