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 original handwritten key indicates the woods used in this box, and we are immensely grateful to Dr. Adam Bowett who has studied the samples and provided the following supplementary information:

TURNBULL SPECIMEN WOOD BOX, 1840

LIST OF WOODS

Turnbull
name, Modern or alternative name and Botanical name:

1. Mahoe Blue
mahoe, mahoe Hibiscus
elatus Sw.

2. Braziletta, Braziletto Caesalpinia
spp.

3. Fiddlewood Fiddlewood Citharexylum
spinosum L.

4. Fustic Fustic,
old fustic, dyer’s mulberry Maclura tinctoria D. Don ex Steud.

5. Pigeon Wood Pigeon wood Coccoloba spp.

6. Naseberry Bully
tree, zapota Manilkara zapota (L.)
P. Royen

7. Sea Grape Sea-side grape Coccoloba uvifera (L.) L.

8. Gynep Gynep Melicoccus bijugatus
Jacq.,

9. Olive Black
olive, jucaro Terminalia buceras (L.) C.
Wright

10. Coffee Coffee Coffea arabica L.

11. Black ebony Cocus wood, Jamaica ebony Brya ebenus L.

12. White torch
Candlewood, rosewood, Amyris balsamifera L.
West
Indian sandalwood

13. Logwood Campeachy wood Haematoxylum campechianum L.

14. Black torch Black torch Erithalis fruticosa L.

15. Wild
mahogany Red cedar, broomstick Trichilia
hirta L.

16. Coconut Coconut palm Cocos nucifera L.

17. Prickly
pole Prickly pole Bactris jamaicana L. H.
Bailey

18. Date Date palm Phoenix dactylifera L.

19. Redwood unknown unknown

20. Green
candlewood unknown unknown

21. Braziletta Braziletto Caesalpinia
spp.

22. Yellow saunders
Satinwood Zanthoxylum
flavum Vahl.

23. Mahoe Blue
mahoe, mahoe Hibiscus
elatus Sw.

24. Calabash Calabash Crescentia
cujete L.

25. Lignum
vitae Lignum vitae Guaiacum
officinale L.

26. Tamarind Tamarind Tamarindus indicus
L.

27. Wild
cabbage Partridge wood, cabbage
wood Andira inermis Kunth

28. Zebra Goncalo alves Astronium
spp.

29. Green ebony
unknown unknown, perhaps
Tabebuia spp.?

30. Wild orange Orange. Citrus spp.

31. Grey saunders Grey saunders? possibly
Terminalia tetraphylla (Aubl.)

Gere & Boatwr.

Box sides

32. Yacca Yacca, yacher Podocarpus
purdieanus Hook.

Box bottom
(inside)

33. West Indian Juniper,
red cedar Juniperus barbadensis

Dr Bowett has also written an extensive study of each of the wood samples above which is available via email on request.

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.