Shaker Wood “Finger” Boxes
Small oval wood boxes were used throughout the nineteenth century to store foodstuffs in the pantry, ladies’ sewing accessories and notions and small collectibles in general. Many of these boxes were formed with sides from a single thin “band” of wood with shaped “fingers” at one end. These fingers overlapped the opposite end of the band to which they were joined with copper, iron or brass tacks, thus forming the box. The box lid is similarly constructed, usually with a one-finger lap join.
Today’s collectors refer to these boxes by the number of fingers forming the lap join, i.e. a two-finger box, a three-finger box, etc. On occasion confusion arises as to whether to include the lid fingers in this short-hand count reference. p4A.com has consulted with the box makers and the director of Canterbury Shaker Village restoration on this point and determined that the universal standard is to count the fingers on the box only (not including the lid) in making this reference. Thus a three-finger box would have three fingers on the bottom portion of the box and one finger on the lid. In practice the lid covers one of the lower box fingers and only three fingers “show” so the visual result is the same.