This box was handmade by a man in the 1920’s as a gift for his new step daughter.  He wanted it to be  for her doll clothes.  In the summer of 2017 I was asked to restore and brighten the box before it was presented as a holiday gift to the  grandniece of the original maker.    Although I was given free reign I did not want to ruin the integrity of the piece.  I could see Pine trees and Native American influences in his precise geometric patterns.  As you can see in the two “before” pictures, the gold colored edging was blackened or totally gone, and many areas of paint were also worn away.    I matched and freshened the colors and put fresh gold paint on all the edges.  The inside cover was lined with glued-on bright pink foil paper (not shown), and so too  was the removable tray .  Most of the foil paper was in bad shape and I removed it, but I chose to keep it inside the tray in tribute to the box’s  history.    A serious crack in the structure of the lid needed strong glue.  I learned the box had been created in Oregon and I searched for images that would evoke its origins.  I found multiple photos of a landscape attributed to the Pacific Northwest and used them to create a scene which pulls in the colors from the outside of the box.   Sunflowers and Lupines are native to the area as is the California Dog Face butterfly.