Pennsylvania, circa 1860–1890
Painted and coopered wood
A wonderfully spirited piece of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania folk art, this covered salt box is as much about color and personality as utility. The coopered body retains a warm, beautifully mellowed salmon-red painted surface, bound with overlapping bentwood hoops and fitted with a broad, wonderfully irregular swing handle on turned wooden pivots.
The real delight is the lid. Against the rich salmon ground, an exuberant garden of deep green and blue-green scrolling foliage curls and twists across the surface, punctuated by fanciful blossoms, feathery leaves and wonderfully eccentric flower and fruit forms. Creamy yellow brushwork dances throughout the composition—highlighting the great sweeping scrolls, forming petals and tiny flourishes, and even creating a charming crosshatched fruit-like motif. Dark, almost black accents give the design remarkable movement and depth.
As if the lid weren’t playful enough, the unknown decorator finished the piece with a repeating series of mustard-yellow swags around the lid band and lower hoop—a wonderfully simple bit of ornament that gives the otherwise restrained body just the right amount of flourish.
Nothing about the decoration feels stiff or mechanical. The painter’s hand is everywhere: slightly uneven curves, confident sweeping brushstrokes, fanciful flowers and delightful little asymmetries give the box the unmistakable character of true American folk painting.
Constructed of individually fitted wooden staves with lapped bentwood hoops, a fitted wooden lid and broad bentwood bail, the box retains the wonderful evidence of its long working life—shrinkage, small separations, worn hoop edges, old fasteners and beautifully softened paint. Rather than diminishing the piece, this honest wear has given the salmon, green, yellow and black palette the mellow surface that makes early painted woodenware so appealing.
A particularly colorful and whimsical survivor of the Pennsylvania-German decorative tradition—part household object, part painted garden, and unmistakably folk art.