Repurposing an Antique Crate as a Shelf + a Winner

Congratulations to  Donna from My Shabby Chateau who is the winner for one pillow of her choice from Word Garden.  Donna, please contact me through my email button with your full name/address and an email address and I'll put you in touch with Sally at Word Garden. 

I have a collection of antique wooden crates that I assembled some years back.  One of my favorites was this crate by E J Larrabee Biscuit Company out of Albany, New York.  

This company started in 1861 and quickly became a huge international success competing largely with English biscuits imported to the United States.  The firm employed 350 workers and produced 300 varieties of biscuits and crackers.  The "biscuit" in the name of the company is a British English and early American English term for cracker products. 

E J Larrabee is one of many companies consolidated to form Nabisco around 1900.

My crate dates somewhere around 1890.  There is a paper label on the lid and on the front of the crate.  I've had the lid hanging in my kitchen for a long time but until recently didn't have use/space for the crate itself.  I decided to turn the crate into a shelf and hang it over the doorway leading from the kitchen into the dining room.

I simply added picture hanging hardware to the bottom of the crate (pardon the blurry photo),

asked Trev for a little help

then hung it up, and added a vintage Hershey's cookbook and some brown transferware. 

The crate as a shelf looks great from the bottom looking up since the original label shows.

I'll share more of my crate collection in an upcoming post. 

Until then...

Our house was not unsentient matter - it had a heart and a soul, and eyes to see with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benedictions.  We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out in eloquent welcome - and we could not enter it unmoved.

~Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)~

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