The lid with geometric parquetry veneers of exotic timbers and crossbanded in rosewood, the front with a lock (with key), opening to reveal an interior lift-out tray fitted with sewing tools in carved mother of pearl and bone, lined with red silk, the underside of the tray with a handwritten paper key to the woods used in the top and the inscription: ‘Key to a work box manufactured of yacca and thirty other different Jamaican woods by Ralph Turnbull How. Kin. Jam. 1840.’ Trade label on the underside.

The handwritten key indicates the woods used in the top of this box are as follows:

Mahoe - Hibiscus elatus.

Fiddlewood - Citharexylum spinosum

Fustic - Maclura tinctoria

Braziletta - Haematoxylum brasiletto

Pigeon Wood - Hedy Carya arborea?

Gynep (guinep) - Melicoccus bijugatus

Naseberry - Manilkara zapota

Sea Grape - Coccoloba uvifera

Olive - Olea europaea

Coffee – Coffea (there are over 130 species)

Black ebony - Diospyros malabarica

White torch - Burseraceae

Logwood - Haematoxylum campechianum

Black torch - Burseraceae

Wild mahogany - Swietenia mahagoni

Coconut – Cocos nucifera

Prickly pole - Bactris plumeriana

Date - Phoenix dactylifera

Redwood - Sequoia sempervirens

Green candlewood – Dracaena

Yellow sanders - (Satinwood) - Zanthoxylum flavum Vahl.

Calabash - Crescentia cujete

Lignum vitae - Guaiacum

Tamarind - Tamarindus indica

Wild cabbage - Brassica oleracea

Zebra - Microberlinia brazzavillensis

Green ebony - Jacaranda obtusifolia

Wild orange - Citrus × aurantium L.

Grey sanders - Terminalia tetraphylla

Yacca - Podocarpus purdieans Hook.

A very similar box by Turnbull bearing the maker's label and containing a hand-inscribed drawing cataloguing the woods used (in the same script as the labels on lids of this box) was sold at Christie’s London, 26th October, 2010 (lot 124).

Thomas Coulborn and Sons sold another box with handwritten labels by Turnbull to the Victoria and Albert Museum and an important 19th Century Jamaican Inlaid Centre Table by Ralph Turnbull to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ralph Turnbull (b.1788 - d.1865) was the most recognised and important of all the furniture makers of the nineteenth century in Jamaica. He created a style that combined adaptations of British designs with the use of exotic indigenous timbers to dramatic effect. Turnbull was probably of Scottish birth, as he practiced as a Scottish Methodist. Where in Scotland he was born and anything else of his early life remains unknown. It is certain he arrived in Kingston, Jamaica in 1815 and set up a furniture business with his brothers, Thomas and Cuthbert. By the mid 1820s he was working alone (it appears the brothers had fallen out) and Ralph continued on his own until the 1830s when he worked with his brother, Thomas, again. In 1834/5 Ralph’s eldest son joined the business and later in 1844, when Ralph's youngest son, Robert came of age he too joined his father, brother and uncle in the family business. Tragically, in the same year, 1844, Ralph Turnbull senior lost both his sons. The company name remained the same, ‘Ralph Turnbull and Sons’, until 1 January, 1852 when Ralph changed the company name to ‘Turnbull and Lee’. William Lee was Ralph Turnbull’s son-in-law by marriage to his daughter, Isabel. By 1852 Turnbull was 64 years old and a very old man, even more so by Jamaican life expectancy standards. Ralph Turnbull died in Kingston, Jamaica in 1865 at the age of 77.

We are grateful to Dr John Cross for his research on Ralph Turnbull.