Mid 19th C. Satinwood or Cherrywood box with dovetail construction. Bone handles, inlayed doves, star and heart escutcheon. Banner reads “Catharine L. Barker”. 7″ H x 12-1/2″ W x 6″ D. Overall good condition. Old Sotheby’s tag on underside. An excerpt from Dr. Stuart M. Frank’s upcoming book Biographical Dictionary of Scrimshaw Artists (2024): Catherine Lydia Barker (1842-1932), known as “Kate” and “Katie”, was the second of five daughters of Isaac P. Barker III and Almeda Reed (1817-1855). Her parents were married in 1838, at which time Isaac was a butcher in Dartmouth, Massachusetts (his hometown); but he was a veteran of two whaling voyages in the Dartmouth ship Washington (1834-36 and 1836-37) and is accordingly attributed with the scrimshaw, made a few years later. Both parents died when Katie was twelve and thirteen, but she attended the Pierce Academy in New Bedford, where she studied ancient and modern languages, worked as a schoolteacher in Dartmouth (1860), graduated from the State Normal School in Bridgewater (1864) (now Bridgewater State University), and was a schoolteacher in Foxborough, Massachusetts (from 1864). In 1878 she married Willis Little Thurston (1850-1921), a grocer in Bangor, Maine, where she died at age 91.
