Oak Blanket Boxes

Oak, the timber of early British furniture
The oak blanket box has perhaps the oldest and clearest origins of all the items of furniture on sale today.  This is because the blanket box is only a minor advance on the traditional wooden chest and because oak was always the traditional choice of material for furniture making.

The wooden chest was the original multi-purpose piece of furniture.  It would have served as a seat, a table and a place in which to store any or all valuable items.  Equipped with sturdy handles, the chest would have been ready at a moments notice to be removed to a place of safety, away from invaders or attacking armies.  The invention of the dovetail joint greatly helped the construction of wooden pull out drawers which were added to the base of chests, to form mule chests, and gradually more drawers filled the cabinet until the chest of drawers was developed.   

A simple wooden chest was still useful for storing bedlinen to keep it clean and protect it from moths, so the blanket box came into existence.  As mentioned earlier, oak was the universal timber of choice for furniture making in the Medieval period, so oak blanket boxes would have been the standard for the time. Oak was in plentiful supply as it covered large parts of the country from earliest times right up to the 18th Century.  It was the universal construction material – the plastic of its day.  Oak was used for buildings, furniture, wagons and ships, in fact almost everything that was made would have had a version made of oak.  

The universal material
Oak is a slow growing tree with a dense timber that does most things well.  For example, it is not as rot resistant as sweet chestnut when used for fencing, but it is still a good choice for fencing.  It cannot be carved as easily as lime, but is still a good wood to carve.  It may not be as attractive as walnut or mahogany, but still has a beautiful grain pattern.  A perfect material in fact, for making an oak blanket box.  

The oak was in plentiful supply until the middle of the 1700s when the demand for more ships for Britain’s Royal and Merchant navies began to use timber at greater rates.  The situation deteriorated even further with the onset of the Industrial Revolution that demanded wood for iron making before the method of using coal was perfected.  This took far more timber than would have been needed to make an oak blanket box for every household in the country and was a time when people first realised that maintaining oak woodlands for the value of their timber was important.   

One of the areas where managing woodland with a view to future timber needs started to be practiced was the Forest of Dean on the Gloucestershire borders.

The connection between the Mary Rose and oak blanket boxes
The Forest of Dean is generally thought to have been the source of the oak used for building such famous ships as the Mary Rose and HMS Victory – the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission.  It is also certain that some of the oak from this woodland would have been used to make oak blanket boxes.