Object Record
Images
Metadata
Title |
Scrimshaw Decorated Box, View of Boston |
Place of Origin |
New York, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island |
Artist or Maker |
Enos, Captain Manuel (1826-1915) |
Date |
c.1865 |
Materials |
Whalebone, Baleen, Wood, Mother of Pearl |
Dimension Details |
Height: 4 13/16" Width: 8" Length: 10 3/16" |
Description |
This complex and highly-decorated scrimshaw ditty box is made from whale skeletal bone with baleen and mother-of-pearl inlay. The engravings on the box include a freehand copy of the masthead view of Boston Harbor from either "Gleason's" or "Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion" (a popular weekly periodical of the time), a figure of a woman on horseback bearing a sword, two Greek muses, two stylish women with head scarves, and two fashion plate models. Born in Portugal, Captain Manuel Enos arrived at Sag Harbor, New York on a whale ship in the early 1840s and continued in a whaling career throughout his life, eventually settling in Chile in his later years. The box is completely covered with pin-prick outline engravings of figures cut from magazines, a technique in which the artist pricks a series of dots and then connects them with engraved lines. The lid is decorated with an inlaid eight-pointed star with a running floral leaf and vine motif around the rim. Both the lid and the box are joined at their seams with elaborate and perfectly proportioned finger joints worked in a scissor pattern. |
Provenance |
Joe Kindig, Jr. & Son Antiques, York, Pennsylvania by May, 1967 Sold to The Dietrich American Foundation, 1967 |
Object Name |
Box |
Object ID |
1.8.194 |
Search Terms |
whaling |