promises

Yesterday I was given an unusual Christmas gift by my friend Stuart. He had found it in the charity shop where he volunteers, and thought I would like it. It is a "promise box", probably from the 1950's but maybe even older, a decorated cardboard box filled with little rolls of paper with bible verses written on them.

A little internet research revealed that these boxes were popular in Victorian times, and today some people make their own. In the early 1900's, a  Glasgow-based firm, Pickering and Inglis, made a box called the "Golden Grain", which came with a tiny pair of tweezers to remove the scrolls. Users were instructed to "Pick out one of the rolls, read and commit to memory the promise, then replace in box."

A lovely gift, thank you Stuart :-)