Elegant Antique Spruce Gum Box with Top and Bottom Slide Openings vintage Asian plate Their fronts show five layers

Their fronts show five layers of stacked chip carved wood at the corners

These trains (scroll through all photos to see the complete set) I purchased at the estate sale of a family in Newburyport

they still look great and have years of good use in them yet

>>one (the one with animals on the cover) features about 12 full pages of lovely penmanship practice along with a few pages with just one line at the top

Visible image size: 11 5/8" x 13 3/16"

Elegant Antique Spruce Gum Box with Top and Bottom Slide Openings vintage Asian plate Their fronts show five layersThere are fancier spruce gum boxes out there, but I think this plain one, found in Maine, is as lovely as they come. Associated with logging and lumbering activities, spruce gum boxes, also known as gum books as they were typically shaped like books, as this one is, were usually made from a solid piece of wood, as this one was, with a sliding opening at top and sometimes at bottom as well, as is the case here. Now highly collectible, these were made