Tibetan Brass Trunk with Stand

The leather has crazed like a dry lake bed. The brass has held on.

This trunk with stand comes from Tibet and dates to the late 18th or early 19th century. It is leather over wood with brass mounts. In Tibet, leather-covered trunks like this held clothing, valuables and household goods in homes and monasteries, and they were tough enough to travel by pack animal. The dark surface is crazed across the front and lid, with a central panel of brown hide holding two shaped, studded plates. Thin brass straps bend around the corners, and a hasp drops from the lid. The low wooden stand ends in small turned-out feet. Twenty-nine inches long, 12 deep, 22 high.

It has not said what it carried.