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No, not this one

moons

I think this would be a difficult piece of furniture to live with. “Twin moons stare down one-eyed space aliens fresh off the mothership, 1769” we’ll call it. It’s got a certain…mmm…I dunno.

For our anniversary this year, Uncle B bought a beautiful 17th C coffer to replace the Ikea entertainment center eyesore in the living room. It arrived today, and it’s spectacular. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in and it’s perfect (and, yes, it has the set-top box on it, but somehow it still manages to look dignified).

We’ve been meaning to buy one for that spot, like, forever. When this house was built (sometime between 1500 and 1610), oak coffers like this would have been the one for sure piece of furniture they would have had; probably a number of them. The chair was a newfangled contraption (at least in terms of furnishing a humble household), so these things would have served as storage, seating, working surfaces. We had no lack of ones to choose from — Britain is lousy with them, still.

Anyway, I found our friends the moon-aliens while looking for a picture of a coffer similar to ours to show you, on account of I’m too lazy to try and get the difficult shot of ours in situ. Mostly, though, I wanted to tease you guys with the sort of antiques easily available here. Tease, tease.

Oh, and thanks to Brexit jitters, the pound is nearing parity with the dollar. You can buy a whole English £ for $1.20 today.

Comments


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: February 22, 2017, 10:26 pm

I need these. I NEED them.

http://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/382418/rare-set-of-5-numbered-c19th-ironbound-oak-countryhouse-silverchests/


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: February 22, 2017, 11:38 pm

We know all about English antiques. We watched LoveJoy. 😛


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: February 23, 2017, 12:44 am

@Feynmangroupie – Those are wonderful! They’d make perfect ammunition storage chests – one each for 9 mm, 5.56, .30-06, .338 Lapua Magnum, and 12 Ga.


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: February 23, 2017, 12:50 am

Uncle AL, they would indeed.


Comment from p2
Time: February 23, 2017, 2:54 am

brought a handful of things back when i returned from there in the early 90s…couple 17th century maps, whole pile o’ books from the late 18th & early 19th… the rate was $2.52 to the quid when i got there in 82…i was making just over $600 a month gross…. times were, as they say, tight. went to just about parity in 85 or 86.. i think it hovered about $1.50 per for my second tour….


Comment from tomfrompv
Time: February 23, 2017, 8:18 am

So tell us again why the pound is dropping in value? Is the UK printing more money than the Fed? Hard to believe.

You can’t blame Brexit since the Euro is dropping too.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: February 23, 2017, 3:11 pm

What a fabulous anniversary gift. If you can’t get a photo of the coffer that satisfies you, how about a sketch? 🙂

P.S. When I was on a high school newspaper staff in the late 60s, we visited the newspaper offices in Amarillo, TX. One of the advertising employees was an artist, and she drew the artwork for clothing ads and furniture ads (anything they needed I suppose). Spectacular—we were stunned watching her work, and the journalism teacher had to drag us away from her lair.


Comment from BJM
Time: February 23, 2017, 11:49 pm

Moons? Does anyone else see the two hares?

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