What's the difference between a coffer and a blanket box?

In practice the words overlap. "Coffer" tends to be used for the earlier oak chests, plank or panelled, and appears in 407 titles. "Blanket box" is the general term for a lidded chest kept in a bedroom or hall, and appears in 522. The same chest could carry either name depending on the dealer writing the title. Reading the timber and construction in the description tells you more than the noun does.

Which wood are these usually made from?

Oak leads, in 506 titles, followed by pine in 298. Elm, camphor wood, mahogany, walnut and a scattering of satinwood, padouk and teak make up the rest. Oak carries the panelled and carved coffers. Pine carries the Victorian boxes, often painted, scumbled or stripped.

How old can a blanket chest be?

The dealers' dated field runs from 1680 to 1940 across the listings that carry a clean year. Title attributions reach further, with sixteenth-century Tudor and Elizabethan claims at one end and 1930s oak at the other. One sampled title claims a late fifteenth-century Gothic coffer in oak and elm. It is the only pre-1500 attribution anywhere in the evidence, so medieval dating isn't a real segment of this market.

Are these only English?

No. Origins outside Britain form a steady minority: Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Romanian, Alpine, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Zanzibari, Canadian and American pieces all appear. Swedish painted chests and Chinese camphor wood turn up most often among them.

Do people use blanket chests as something else?

Often, and dealers say so in the title. Twenty-two titles offer the chest as a coffee table. Others are listed as a TV stand, hall seat, window seat or fireside bin. The low, flat-lidded forms take to it most easily.

Who made antique blanket chests?

Names are almost absent from this category. A scan of 1,290 listings turned up no maker or workshop attributions at all, which is unusual for a furniture form. What dealers name instead is a region. Welsh appears in 36 titles, and Yorkshire, Lakeland, Lancashire, Dorset, Westmorland, West Country and North Country coffers all surface in the samples.