Boxes for everything. (Current and Coming).(box exhibit, Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts)(Brief Article)

In the course of time, boxes have been made for almost every imaginable purpose in every conceivable size. An exhibition on view at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, surveys boxes made and used in New England from the late seventeenth to the twentieth century. More than fifty examples on view are from the collections off the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in Boston, where the show was seen earlier, and some are from the collection of the Hancock Shaker Village. The show is entitled Boxes, Open and Shut and may be seen until April 7. It is sponsored by Northeast Auctions, by Ronald Bourgeault.

The Shakers are particularly well known for the oval boxes they produced in some quantity for use in their communities, for sale to outsiders, and to contain the numerous products--herbs, sarsaparilla lozenges, asthma cures--they made for those in the outside world. These boxes are highly regarded today for their meticulous construction, which called for bending wood into an oval shape and affixing the parts with a series of neatly placed tacks. ...