This month’s featured treasure is an extremely rare item that has not been seen very much before on 1715 Fleet wreck sites. What we have here is a silver pounce box. A pounce box had a very functional purpose in its day. The lid of the box was designed with small holes for sprinkling a fine powder (or pounce) over fresh manuscripts to prevent the ink from bleeding and smearing.
(Image Courtesy of 1715 Queen Jewels LLC)
Lid as conserved, showing numerous small holes for sprinkling.
(Image Courtesy of 1715 Queens Jewels LLC)
Our treasure weighs 313 grams and is a 2 ¾ inch cube. Made of silver it has many finely engraved details. It is one of the finest treasure artifacts ever recovered from the 1715 Fleet. What is particularly interesting is the Certificate of Authenticity accompanying the item (below).
(Image Courtesy of Sedwick and Associates, LLC)
The Certificate (signed by Brent Brisben, who was the Managing Member of the group at that time) contains two items of information not often found on a Certificate of Authenticity. First, it designates where the item was found (Corrigans) and second, the date that the item was recovered, shown as 298 years and 316 days. This translates into June 11, 2014. Truly fascinating bits of information.
Images of box as found (Images Courtesy of 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels, LLC)
The good news is that our Treasure of the Month for May can be yours! It is currently listed as Lot 1662 in the upcoming Sedwick and Associates, LLC Treasure Auction 37, May 7 – 9, 2025.
NOTE: This is not the first box that we have featured as a Treasure of the Month. See August 2012 (gold box with cross, emeralds, chain and rings): June 2018 (wooden treasure box containing silver coins): September 2021 (octagonal box with red coral rosary and rings): and March 2025 (another wooden treasure box this one containing silver artifacts).
Special thanks to Sedwick and Associates, LLC and Connor Falk for granting permission to use images featured in this post and for providing the information used in the text.
Also, special thanks to 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels, LLC for providing additional images of our featured artifact as found.
