Overlooked wooden box at UK museum turns out to be ‘very rare’ 300-year-old item
Visitors to Rudyard Kipling’s former home near the southeastern coast of the United Kingdom find themselves wandering under a ceiling of exposed beams, across large red rugs and through rooms filled with miscellaneous belongings of the famous writer.
One of those belongings — a small wooden box — turned out to be a “very rare” 300-year-old item.
The box sat on display at the home-turned-museum “many years” but went largely overlooked, the National Trust said in a Feb. 16 news release. Museum curators recently took a closer look at the box after hearing about another museum’s project focusing on an indigenous South American art technique known as Barniz de Pasto.
Sure enough, curators identified the decorated wooden box as a “very rare” example of the Barniz de Pasto technique dating to around 1700.
Bateman’s, the museum at Kipling’s former home, shared photos of the box in a Feb. 19 Facebook post. Most of the box and its curved lid is covered in intricate floral designs with a brown edge.
Barniz de Pasto is an “ancient practice” from South America that “involves applying thin layers of coloured resin extracted from the seeds of the mopa mopa shrub to create beautiful decorations,” the organization said. The method is still used in Colombia and, in 2020, was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The Barniz de Pasto method is “most associated” with the Colombian city of Pasto, but curators said they aren’t sure where Kipling’s box was originally made.
“We believe this piece would have been commissioned from local artisans, probably by Spanish noblemen or clergy,” Emma Schmuecker, one of the conservationists who analyzed Kipling’s box, said in the release. “The shape of the casket and some of its decoration were clearly derived from East Asian lacquered objects, whilst the fruits and flowers are South American in inspiration.”
But how did a 300-year-old handmade box from South America end up in Kipling’s possession? Curators don’t know for sure but offered two possibilities: Kipling could have bought the box “while on his trip to Brazil in 1927,” or his daughter could have bought it while “on honeymoon in Spain” and gifted it to her father.
The box has “similarities to other (known) objects but they are so rarely studied,” the organization said. The National Trust shared photos of the rare item in a Feb. 21 Facebook post.
“(This) is the first time that a Barniz de Pasto item has been put through such a detailed study and the information will be valuable for future scientific study of these objects,” Schmuecker said. “It could help us create a timeline for when pieces were made and even, with sufficient examples, identify individual workshops.”
Kipling’s Barniz de Pasto box is back on display at Bateman’s museum in Burwash, a roughly 60-mile drive southeast from London.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 11:43 AM with the headline "Overlooked wooden box at UK museum turns out to be ‘very rare’ 300-year-old item."
