Incredible Late 18th/Early 19th Century Prisoner of War Book Shaped Straw Work Sewing Box with Four Inlaid Watercolors soft seascape and then what look like

and then what look like hummingbirds

1820s-40s I believe

with insets that have been filled with sample designs (which can be removed to use for one's own)

For 40 years

and a fairly old one I believe

Incredible Late 18th/Early 19th Century Prisoner of War Book Shaped Straw Work Sewing Box with Four Inlaid Watercolors soft seascape and then what look likeThe chance of finding and bringing home an object like this is what gets me out of bed early in the morning to go to a show and being a box, this itself embodies opens up as a series of discoveries. (For me this box also very much embodies the joy of looking and learning, as it is only recently that I've been awakened too the extraordinariness of late 18th early 19th century Napoleonic prisoner of war straw work. more on that below). This is a sewing