The Henry O. Studley Tool Cabinet (1838-1925)

The chest is made out of mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, ivory and mother-of-pearl, probably retrieved from the Poole Piano Company's scrap material. Designed to be hung on a wall, despite holding 300 tools, when closed, it measures only 22.8 cms deep, 99 cms high, and 45.7 cms wide. It weighs 32.6 kilograms empty and 70.7 kilograms with tools. Every tool has a custom-made holder, many with beautiful inlay and tiny clasps that rotate for easy access. When folded closed, tools from each side nestle precisely in a “jigsaw puzzle arrangement” of flip-up trays, fold-out layers and hidden compartments in three layers. It is secured locked with a built-in dial combination lock.

Studley was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he died in 1925, he gave the tool chest to a friend. That man’s grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s as the centrepiece of woodworking and other tradesman tool chests. It was later sold into the hands of private collectors, the current making it occasionally available for inspection. In 2006 it was restored with a few missing tools returned and inlays renewed.