What wood are Victorian chests usually made from?

Pine leads by a wide margin, appearing in around a third of titles on Sellingantiques, both stripped and painted. Beyond that, camphorwood and teak carry the campaign and colonial trunks, oak and elm the panelled coffers and iron-bound silver chests, and mahogany, walnut, rosewood and birch the frames of upholstered ottomans.

How are blanket boxes and trunks different?

A blanket box is domestic and stays put: a lidded chest for bedding and linen, often with a small candle box compartment at one end of the well. A trunk was made to move. It usually has handles, frequently metal binding at the corners and edges, and a dome top on a good number of the travelling and steamer examples.

Why do so many listings just say Victorian?

Because the dating field is normally filled with a period word. Victorian and 19th Century labels cover the majority of the archive. Only 232 of 822 listings give a year, and those run 1800 to 1930, so the shelf stretches either side of the reign. Where decades appear they gather in the 1850s to 1880s.

Are Victorian chests used as coffee tables?

Often. Roughly one title in seven offers the piece a second use, and that is a settled part of how the category is sold. Blanket boxes appear as coffee tables, TV stands, window seats and hall seats, the flat-topped pine ones most of all.

What is a campaign trunk?

A portable chest made for military or colonial service, most often camphorwood or teak with brass fittings and binding. Campaign appears in about one in ten titles, and military in a similar band. Indian, Ceylonese and Anglo-Indian examples turn up throughout, and East African Zanzibar chests in teak, padouk and rosewood surface only a handful of times, near the top of the range.

Do tool chests come up in this category?

They do, though in smaller numbers than the pine and trunk groups. Titles name carpenters', joiners', shipwrights', cobblers' and cabinet makers' chests, and the fitted interiors with lift-out slides and drawered tiers are what set them apart from an empty well.