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A Dutch colonial amboyna/padouk document box, 18th century, with ornately cast and stamped corners, hinges, back plates, handles and escutcheons, 32cm wide, 21.5cm deep, 11cm high. Amboyna is the burr form of padouk (Pterocarpus indicus), and is named after the Dutch trading station on the island of Ambon, from where the best wood was exported. Numerous similar boxes survive, some mounted with silver hallmarked for Batavia, the chief Dutch settlement in the Moluccas. The boxes had diverse uses, but the smaller, silver-mounted boxes were known as sirih boxes. These contained the ingredients to make a quid of sirih, which comprised a folded sirih (betel) leaf spread with lime, shavings of areca nut and a piece of gambir (dried sap of the Jasmine bush). The chewing of sirih, which turned teeth black and saliva blood red, was a widespread Asian custom adopted by many Dutch settlers, both men and women. Literature: Jan Venendal, Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India during the Dutch period, Delft (1985), pp. 85-91, pls. 78-88.
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