Description:
A brass edged rosewood box having two velvet lined liftout trays of rosewood construction and document wallet with high security Chubb detector lock. 

The box is beautifully constructed in highly figured rosewood having solid rounded brass edgings and inset handles.

The ruched and plain velvet  are all original.

Origin: UK. 

Circa: 1840

Materials: Rosewood, brass

Size: 31.5cm wide by 21.4cm by 14.5 cm:  12.4 inches wide by  8.4 inches by  5.7 inches.

Condition: Good over all. working lock with keys (2).

The box has two velvet lined liftout trays of rosewood construction and document wallet in the lid.

 The boxis fitted with high security Chubb detector lock. 

Detail of the rounded brass edging which contrasts with the rosewood and acts as a protection to the edges.

 There is a document wallet in the lid.

The box has a Chubb lock with the serial # 36233. 

This indicates that the lock was made 1838 - 1882 Horseley Fields, Wolverhampton (19801 - 899500)
The name of Chubb is famous in the lock world for the invention of the detector lock and for the production of high quality lever locks of outstanding security during a period of 140 years. 

The detector lock,  was patented in 1818 by Jeremiah Chubb of Portsmouth, England, who gained the reward offered by the Government for a lock which could not be opened by any but its own key. 

This box comes with two keys which are elegantly small.

It is recorded that, after the appearance of this detector lock, a convict on board one of the prison ships at Portsmouth Dockyard, who was by profession a lockmaker, and had been employed in London in making and repairing locks, asserted that he had picked with ease some of the best locks, and that he could pick Chubb's lock with equal facility. 

One of these was given to the convict together with all the tools which he stated to be necessary, as well as blank keys fitted to the drill pin of the lock and a lock made on exactly the same principle, so that he might make himself master of the construction. Promises of a reward of £100 from Mr Chubb, and a free pardon by the Government were made to him in the event of his success. After trying for two or three months to pick the lock, during which time he repeated overlifted the detector, which was as often undetected or readjusted for his subsequent attempts, he gave up, saying that 

Chubb's were the most secure locks he had ever met with, and that it was impossible for any man to pick or to open them with false instruments. Improvements in the lock were subsequently made under various patents by Jeremiah Chubb and his brother Charles.

See: www.chubblocks.co.uk/historyoflocks.html 
www.chubbarchive.co.uk /
http://www.antique-locks.com/ 

The Rosewood facings are inlaid with brass. The velvet lined rosewood liftout trays have beading run into the top surface.

 There is an armorial hawk engraved in the brass plate in the top.