I’m sitting here feeling a bit chuffed with this pic. I know the subject isn’t really all that special or interesting to most and of course I only photographed it a week or so ago. To me though, it’s very special indeed.

Somehow though, I feel I’ve managed to do this beautiful item justice more than last time. The warmth and richness of the wood, the contrasting metals, both on the key and keyhole, as well as on the lock and its brass casing all pop out of the pic, for me anyway. I like the fading in and out of focus with the shallow depth of field, just getting all my ‘important bits’ for today’s next step to the reveal.

The lock is complex, huh? Why do you think it needs the claws? What does the box contain that is so important it needs an extra anti-tampering device like this? Or is it anti-tampering? What does the box contain?

Well, it’d be true to say it contains:

· Some very ‘racey’ stuff
· Some very dangerous stuff
· Some very fine stuff
· Some things that give and some things that don’t
· Something soft and tactile
· Lots of things that make a machine vital to the ‘industrial revolution’ work
· A whole lot of useless articles
· It’s even the home to something I’ve photographed twice before in my three years of PADing.

In short, it’s not for one thing only, other than a collective thing.

It’s reputed to have a royal connection to the Bowes-Lyon household (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the Queen Mother), though I have no way of authenticating that. We believe it to be an exhibition or sample piece, made with the utmost precision and care.

How then did it come to be butchered? When I was given this exquisite piece, it was covered in paint, all its veneered panels were lifting and many un-repairable, its legs had been unceremoniously hacked off and it had languished in the back of my mother-in-law’s shed for more than twenty years, unloved, unused and seemingly without hope of redemption…..

When I was asked if I would like it (in order to make way for gardening tools), I found myself struggling to stay at my in-law’s (yep, singular) home. All I wanted to do was run away with it clutched to my chest before she changed her mind. (Now you know it’s small enough not only for me to carry but to consider running with.)

Then it met with a ‘white knight’ in the form of my Dad, who shares my passion for beautiful wood. He knew ‘a man who could’ as they say…. I had to part with it for many months while the ‘man who could’ tenderly and lovingly brought it back to life. He carefully, patiently and very slowly took off the peeling veneer and, where possible, re-applied the original veneer. He cut new veneer for the bits that were simply too far-gone. He sanded, polished and made it whole. Three cheers for that man. Three cheers for true craftsmanship of a kind that is so rare these days.

Last year, I was in pyromaniac mode as I so frequently find myself here on pbase and I was burning greenbacks!