Details
Box 3 numbered in graphite on underside of lid 10; box 9 inscribed in graphite on underside of lid soda
Largest: 612 in. (16.5 cm.) high, 1234 in. (32.4 cm.) wide, 938 in. (23.6 cm.) deep
Smallest: 112 in. (3.8 cm.) high, 334 in. (9.5 cm.) wide, 234 in. (7 cm.) deep
Provenance
Box 10 (burgundy): Garth's, Columbus, Ohio
Box 12 (off-white): Forsythes', Russellville, Ohio, 30 December 2012, lot 45
Box 15 (blue): Dirk Soulis Auctions, Lone Jack, Missouri, 9 February 2013, lot 208
Box 17 (orange): Acquired in 2001
Box 20 (yellow): Cornelius Muhilly, Media, Pennsylvania, 2017
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Lot Essay

A remarkable assemblage of the iconic swallow tail fingered oval utility boxes, these twenty examples are notable for their original painted or natural-finished surfaces.

One of the boxes retains an old handwritten note from a Shaker woman named Elizabeth addressed to a Simon D Horner of Pittsford, Vermont. She writes to Simon about daily life, like how she has been sick with "lung fever" and how the spring weather is "warm & pleasant one day, cold and blustering the next." She also writes with a yearning heart to Simon, who seems to have left the Shaker community: "oh Spring my Pet, how I wish that I could see you once more I would kiss that "moustache" all off...oh my dear Simon I have often longed to write you a loving letter just as I felt and tell you how I loved and sympathized with you...and if I write kind affectionate letters to the Absent ones, then thein call one deceitful and it not so. Brother mine, this is no Deceitfulness in me: for I would be just as loving with thein if thein would let me, but they won't, so I must do the best I can, and now I will go back to Canacle, to the time you left Home, oh how I felt when I found out that you was going to go away off, and after you went - it seemed as though my heart would break and the longer you was gone the more I mourned over your absence... I would not stop to rest until you sat beside me...Love...Elizabeth"

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