BEFORE SU ITCASES by leigh macmillen hayes
“Trunks have been around for thousands of years. They’ve been around trees even longer.” linda edestein and paul pat morse, Antique Trunks: Identification and Price Guide
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t’s crazy to realize that the first trunks were hollowed out from trees, but it does make sense when you consider the name. Trunk derives from the Latin word truncus meaning “trunk of a tree, trunk of the body.” Stripping away the covering and glue, Connie Upson of Connie’s Trunks in Naples, Maine, never knows what she may discover on the outside and inside of an antique trunk. Sometimes it’s the grain of the wood or knots that fascinate her. Other times, there might be a label or some other clue about the manufacturer. Always, there’s the wonder of whom did the trunk originally belong to and what voyages did it take? For years, Connie had worked as a national sales manager at a footwear company, but before that she refinished oak furniture so when she began restoring trunks as a hobby,
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she had an inkling about how to go about it. After taking early retirement, her hobby became a full-time business. “I do restoration,” says Connie as we sit on her deck overlooking the shores of Sebago, “but I also give the trunks a new life. It’s a new identity.” While it’s easy to want to call all of the antique trunks Connie refurbishes “Steamer Trunks,” many do not actually fit that description. To be stowed under the berth on a steamship, companies imposed a restriction that the trunk be no more than 14” high, but lengths varied. Another fallacy she learned along the way is that many people believe because their great grandparents immigrated from Europe, their trunk must have been manufactured there. The reality is that most trunks were American-made between 1860 and 1920 and then shipped to Europe, only to find their way back when the ancestors crossed the high seas. At the beginning, the trunks were plain in style and all hardware hand forged. After the Civil War, trunks were manufactured and took on more sophisticated appearanc-
