What's the difference between a mule chest and a coffer?

A coffer is the plain lidded chest with no drawers. A mule chest has one or more drawers built into the base below the well. In practice the labels overlap on Sellingantiques. Around a third of listings in this category call the piece a coffer, and plenty of titles offer both words at once.

Which wood are they usually made from?

Oak, in the majority of titles. That covers the joined, panelled and carved chests of the 17th and 18th centuries which make up about three-quarters of the category. Pine is the second group, roughly one in eight, including painted and scumbled finishes. Mahogany, elm, walnut and burr walnut appear in smaller numbers, along with cedar, deal and one Oregon pine.

How old are most of these chests?

The dating field leans heavily 18th century, with Georgian close behind and a smaller 17th-century group. Nineteenth-century and Victorian listings are fewer. Six listings are filed before 1700 and two titles claim the 16th century. Where a clean year is given, the range runs 1700 to 1930.

What is a coffer bach?

Welsh for little chest. It's a small chest, sometimes raised on a stand, and the spelling varies between coffer bach, coffor bach and coffr bach. Only 13 titles use the term, but they reach the upper end of the range. Welsh work more broadly runs to about one in sixteen listings, with S. Wales and Snowdonia named in some titles.

Are regional attributions common in this category?

Unusually so for a country form. Lancashire appears in 20 titles, often with mahogany or oak crossbanding, and Welsh in around 31. Yorkshire, Lakeland, Dorset, Leeds, North Country and Snowdonia all show up as title-level attributions too. A named region tends to lift a chest within the range.

Do dated examples turn up?

A handful carry a date cut into the wood itself. Titles record 1702, 1716, 1734, 1753 and 1754, some with initials alongside. Those sit above the middle of the range. Most listings, though, use decade-free labels like 18th Century or Georgian rather than a year.

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Antique Mule Chests

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A mule chest is a lidded storage chest with one or two drawers built into the base, made to give a household a deep well for bedding and linen with working drawers underneath.