Boxes in Boxes

If there is one thing I have always loved, it is boxes.  There is something magical and mysterious about a box.  What does it hold?  What can it hold?  What was it built to hold?  Who stashed their treasures in the box before I found it.  What does it smell like inside?  (No, I'm not kidding.  Doesn't everybody sniff the insides of boxes?)  

If I had to describe my favorite kind of box it would be like this:  It is a vintage wooden box with its original, somewhat battered finish.  It has some flaws and needs a little love.  If it has some neat hardware, that's a bonus.  Interior compartments add to the allure, but are not required.  Extra credit for secret compartments.  Under no circumstances will it have been cleaned up and restored by anybody else.  

I bought this box earlier this summer at an antique store for $7.20 plus tax.  It totally matches that description.  You can see that the right front corner of the lid is warped.  It also had a homely fuchsia decal on the top that I did not fancy.  

The hinges need some work, it is missing the tray that would have once sat on the braces inside, and the lock has been removed.  But it is a solid wood box.  It has a paper lining, and Alice Crane wrote her name on the lid. (I frequently find boxes that someone has marked as their property.  I find that really charming.)

The warped spot on the lid will be left alone.  You can see that I have already removed the decal from the top.  I'll leave the missing lock in its missing state.  And eventually, I'll have to do something about the hinges.  But in the meantime, the big annoyance to me was the missing tray.  I have a few wooden box trays without boxes that I hoped would fit, but no luck there.  So I cut up some scrap cardboard and made a tray.  Unfortunately, I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't measure properly, so the result was less than satisfactory.

I searched online for directions on box making.  Most of what I found was not instructional, with a few exceptions.  I did find this and this and this.  

Armed with so little information, a lot of false confidence, and a brand new pack of binder's board, I dove into making a second tray for the box.  The resulting tray was beautiful, if not technically perfect.  It did a nice job of holding my pens or whatever and it fit into the wooden box.  I call that a success.  As I was admiring my finished work, I realized that I should have made a partition in the tray to corral other small do-dads besides pens.  I briefly contemplated adding one on top of the existing tray, but then I got all cocky and decided to make a partitioned tray that nested inside my new tray.

And viola!

I sized the partitioned tray to hold ink samples and nibs.  Or whatever.

I'm so pleased with my success that I want to make custom partitioned trays for my desk drawers and for every box I own -- which is a considerable number of boxes.