Help identifying lock from a Vanderbilt collection

LeslieK

Greetings– I found your site online and am writing with a bit of an odd request. I am a curator at a historic house museum in the U.S. which was owned by one of the Vanderbilt family. We have a cassone an Italian chest in the collection which appears to be made in the 19th century, but is composed of some older elements, which was typical. The mystery is, though.. that when George Vanderbilt purchased it, - it was quite expensive: 1650 pounds in the 1890s making it one of the more expensive things he bought. Overall, there is not much that stands out to me about the piece except the lock on the interior. I know very little about locks, in general, but it appears that it may be early and has been (re)painted. Interestingly, there is also a somewhat inexplicable scene from the Spanish armada on the interior. This painting is also 19th century, but it is referencing the 1588 attack on England & the lock is painted with a similar theme. It occurred to me that it might be worth exploring if the two are connected and if the lock & key could possibly date from that time. Do you know of a specialist who would perhaps be willing to eyeball some photos for me to determine a period and origin to tell me if I am perhaps on the right track.. or am completely off base? I am having issues uploading photos to the site, but can provide them. Many thanks for your help! All the best, Leslie Klingner Leslie Klingner Curator of Interpretation, Biltmore Visit www.biltmore.com today

Doug MacQueen

If you email me the pictures I will load them for you. There are several European collectors on the forum that should be able to ID the lock style and vintage. My email address is “macslocks @ gmail.com” Doug

Dean Nickel

http://www.antique-locks.com/showthread.php/754-How-to-upload-images-into-your-posts
Also you could look at this and see if it helps or do as Doug suggest.:8):

Doug MacQueen

Here are the pictures.

Gerry

do you have pictures from the wholly lock?
do you can open it?
do you have a picture from the outside?

Dean Nickel

It doesn’t look like they will be able to remove the lock without some damage to the chest as what looks like screws has been painted over. The artwork inside the box is VERY nice. This is not your common chest. At least in the US.

Gerry

sometimes is it easy to remove just the cover.

of course it is not uesful to remove the complete lock.

key looks like 19th century

Gerry

i have talked to friend, a lockcollector from suisse,
he thinks it is from the end of 18. century,
but it is very difficult to date without a look inside.

it seems it consists of two different parts,
the oblong part and the baroque part.

maybe this two parts were merged sometime.

he dont know a lock like this.

key must be between last quarter 18th cent. and first quarter 19th cent.

Tom Gordon

For him to pay such a vast amount of money I suspect that either the story of the lock or the painter of the picture was the fantastic value in this piece. My money is on who owned this previously.