English Oak Campaign Chest, Circa 1860

• Oak - Native to Europe and England, oak has been used for joinery, furniture and building since the beginning of the medieval civilisation. It is a pale yellow in colour when freshly cut and darkens with age to a mid brown colour.
  
  Oak as a furniture timber was superceded by walnut in the 17th century, and in the 18th century by mahogany,
  
  Semi-fossilised bog oak is black in colour, and is found in peat bogs where the trees have fallen and been preserved from decay by the bog. It is used for jewellery and small carved trinkets.
  
  Pollard oak is taken from an oak that has been regularly pollarded, that is the upper branches have been removed at the top of the trunk, result that new branches would appear, and over time the top would become ball-like. . When harvested and sawn, the timber displays a continuous surface of knotty circles. The timber was scarce and expensive and was used in more expensive pieces of furniture in the Regency and Victorian periods.
• Circa - A Latin term meaning 'about', often used in the antique trade to give an approximate date for the piece, usually considered to be five years on either side of the circa year. Thus, circa 1900 means the piece was made about 1900, probably between 1895 and 1905. The expression is sometimes abbreviated to c.1900.
• Campaign Furniture - Most of the campaign furniture on the market is associated with the time of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries when there was a high demand from military officers, administrators and colonists.
  
  Campaign furniture is demountable, through clever use of wooden screws and sometimes metal hinges, so that it can disassembled and then packed into lots of manageable size for ease of movement by ship or animal between postings or camps.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• chests of drawers, material - oak 332
• chests of drawers, style - campaign and military 129