400 year old travelling chest emerges at auction

A rare late 17th century brass-studded leather chest from a famed Devonian manor has turned up at auction in Wiltshire, where it is expected to make up to £5,000.

Made by Charles II’s own cabinet maker, Richard Pigg Junior, the metre-wide chest was illustrated in a 1950 edition of Country Life which detailed the interior of Knightstone Manor near Ottery St Mary. At the time, Knightstone was in the ownership of Colonel Reginald Cooper, whose work in preserving medieval properties is well-documented in regard to Cothay Manor in Somerset, where he lived prior to Knightstone.

Richard Pigg Junior worked for the Royal Court through four different reigns (from Charles II to Queen Anne) and a similar chest that was made for William and Mary is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

More recently the chest had been in the collection of the late Jane Sumner, a well-known furniture dealer whose estate is being sold at Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury in the Spring. The chest carries an estimate of £3,000-5,000.