Southern, possibly Virginia, 1680-1720
Ash and yellow pine
Catalog no. 147
Householders in early America spent a great deal of time and energy protecting food and other supplies from vermin. Designed to store fresh or recently cooked foods, southern safes can be traced to the first decades of settlement. Few of these once common objects have survived, however.
Discovered more than fifty years ago in a church near the Virginia-North Carolina border, this safe is the earliest southern example known. The bulbous turned legs resemble those on southern tables from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They represent a turning pattern that probably was introduced by immigrants from northern Europe.