CASE GOODS or BOX GOODS

When I was little (b.1939), most parents had come of age during the Depression. Their major life-lesson was never to waste anything. (Did you know that in 1945 the cost of living in the United States jumped by one-third? Also in that year, a B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building at the 78-79th floors without collapsing it. Things were built sturdier in those days.) Fruit came in wooden rather than cardboard boxes. An orange crate, which was really two compartments because it had a extra division across the middle, made a pretty good child’s chair if one end were removed. However, my father used them to improvise bookshelves. I did the same until a decade ago, with the very same orange crates, because you can’t get new ones. In fact, I sold them for a nice sum.

It is only lately that I understood the term “box goods.” I ran across it in a novel somewhere. The phrase, synonymous with “case goods,” means furniture created by first making a box. If the large box has places to insert smaller boxes which can be pushed in and drawn out, it becomes a chest of drawers. if the large box has built in small boxes along one top edge, possibly about the right size for pigeons (i.e. pigeon holes), then it is a desk. (Directions at: http://chestofbooks.com/home-improvement/woodworking/Carpentry-and-Mechanics-For-Boys/Chapter-VIII-Box-Furniture.html


If the box has doors at the front, it becomes an armoire, or with shelves across the inside, maybe a cupboard (boards to put cups on or a sideboard (boards to make shelves for containers used for “side dishes” or beverages). This is a commercial site that shows many examples: http://www.mgbwhome.com/cgall_new.asp

If the box is on its back and empty in the middle, big enough to contain a mattress, it becomes a bedstead. In some cultures it is enclosed for privacy and warmth, where a person could closet themselves for the night. A closet, of course, is a closed-off or boxed part of a room. A cabinet is a little “cabin” (cabin-ette) which is a box, often fitted with other little boxes as storage compartments, shelves or drawers. A trunk, especially one meant for shipboard like a steamer trunk, is a sort of cabinet that can be transported around. A “cabinet of curiosities” is meant to secure and protect interesting and possibly valuable objects. Chairs and tables are also usually derived from boxes except maybe for beanbag chairs.

I tried the imaginary exercise of removing all the free-standing “box goods” from my house. The armoire for linens, the bathroom cabinets (a tall one for towels, TP and a small library, and a small one for toiletries), the bedroom linens armoire, another smaller one for out-of-season blankets and quilts, a big bureau for underwear, a small one for socks and bedside supplies, an armoire for the television set, a kitchen pantry cabinet, and two old fruit boxes fitted with drawers in which I keep small tools. My most elaborate piece is a barrister’s stack of drawers, separable, with a desk section in the middle. The cheapest are plastic roll-around drawers, good end-tables. The rest are all shelves, which means backless boxes with shelves. A few tables, a few wicker chairs, and my mother’s upholstered “lady chair” which I use for reading if I get there ahead of the cats. I’m not counting the file cabinets that crowd my little “office.” Most of this furniture was purchased when I knew I was coming to this house or after I got here, with the exception of the bookshelves, which have followed me -- as boards -- through decades.

Part of the point of this exercise in inventory is because soon the time will come (by soon I mean within the decade unless illness or economic collapse intervene) when I must “reverse acquire” -- that is, begin to reduce this stuff so I fit into what might be a senior citizen's subsidized apartment. I’ve watched so many people fail to do so, with the result that everything was hurriedly consigned to a dumpster.

The hard part is not getting rid of these case goods, but getting rid of what is in them. Not so much the books, which can be sold to a dealer, but the papers, which need sorting. There are two problems there: separating out what needs to be preserved as an historical record for family, for Bob Scriver’s papers, or for my UU circuit-riding adventure -- in other words, papers of significance to others -- from what I just want to keep. Maybe I might want to develop writing from them. Maybe I just like to sit and look at them and think about what they might mean. When I say “papers” I include a lot of photographs. I already gave a double handful of them to my Oregon niece and her mother, because they are part of that agricultural world and my father took them in the Thirties when he was a wool buyer. Others can be converted to “virtual” form and sent as email or put on blogs or archived in a photo archive.

I look at all this stuff and ask, “why is furniture square and crockery round?” I guess because ceramic things are made on wheels the same as “turned” furniture legs are made on lathes. I speculated in “Bronze Inside and Out” on the difference between Euro and Asian -- maybe African? -- box-type storage as compared with the wrapped soft bundles of nomadic Native Americans and came to the conclusion that we don’t always respect things that are not in boxes. Boxes connote protection and permanence. Boxes require metal tools (drills and saws) and measurement, possibly standardized. Anyway, on the prairie there is never enough wood and certainly not much hardwood suitable for furniture.

Case goods or box goods come in many styles of construction and embellishment. I’ve always been interested in tent furniture: trunks and footlockers with brass corners and recessed handles, tables and chairs, often made of slats, that fold. Military furniture, like that of the cavalry that pursued the Indians, or safari furnishings like camp cots and folding canvas bathtubs. This is the opposite of built-in furniture. What would happen if I gradually converted to camp furniture and nomadic bundles? The first things sacrificed would be paintings with glassed frames, which are really flat little boxes. Hmmm.