Southern bottle cases.

The bottle case--a fitted box set on a frame with tall legs--is one of the furniture forms most sought after by southern collectors today (see Pls. III, IIIa). Mainly found in parts of North Carolina and Virginia, the earliest bottle cases date from the mid-eighteenth century, but the form reached the height of its popularity during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Today examples are frequently referred to as cellarets, but period inventories list them as gin cases, brandy cases, bottle cases, or cases of bottles. (1) At the time the term cellaret referred to a related, shorter-legged form that was frequently lined with lead and was intended to keep ...