Bandboxes

By the early 1800s, a growing middle class had time and money to travel. Expanding modes of transportation — steamboats, canal boats, and railroads — provided opportunities to visit relatives who had moved away or to take short holidays to see cities, shrines, or countryside. Affordable bandboxes stored needed items for these excursions.

Bandbox makers covered the outside of these boxes with scraps of patterned wallpaper or papers with specially printed designs or memorable images. Swags and balusters were motifs familiar to Americans in the early 1800s — neoclassical symbols representing the country as an idealized new republic.

Some bandboxes display recognizable buildings or places — perhaps a future, dreamed-of destination or a place visited by the bandbox's owners during one of their travels. The paper on this box depicts New York City's Castle Garden — the site of an early-1800s fort turned into an opera house and entertainment center for city residents.