Mid-Victorian Leather & Brass Book Safe C.1870
Stock No
3058
2013
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Item Description
The unique leather bound book safe or sham book, once being a photographic album, the covers with central lozenge, the gilded and bound pages opening with a brass clasp to reveal a vacant inner secret storage compartment, with Queen Elizabeths, The Queen Mother’s cypher above in royal blue, and surviving from the high Victorian period.
The piece is in good all-round condition with the only deficiency being one of the brass clasps is lacking. The interior compartment has been executed with super precision.
A book safe is a type of concealment, often a hollowed-out book used to store valuables or small items, designed to blend in with other books on a shelf. The concept has existed for a long time, with historical examples including "sham books" used to fill empty shelves in libraries and even hollowed-out Bibles used to conceal weapons. Octave Uzanne, writing in 1904, in The French Bookbinders of the Eighteenth Century writes: “‘Sham books’, simple wooden boxes, and sometimes mere mouldings, covered with gauffered and gold-tool leathers, with which they filled the empty shelves of a pretentious library, or with which they garnished the doors.”
A particularly good example and a lovely tactile gift for those secret mementoes.
Item Info
Seller
Seller Location
Olney, Buckinghamshire
Item Dimensions
H: 15cm W: 13cm D: 4cm
Period
c.1870
Item Location
United Kingdom
Seller Location
Olney, Buckinghamshire
Item Location
United Kingdom
Seller Contact No
+44 (0)7729 213013
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