Mystery box

We saw this nice old box left out on the street. Since it had a sturdy handle and looked like it would make a nice box for storing LPs in, we took it home.

The handle is also the closing mechanism, the sections of the box are secured by tongue and groove along the top edges

Wow! No way you can store LPs in this box unless you rip out all the original features. And we don’t want to do that! The most interesting detail for me is the printed instruction on how to operate the telephone this box once held. Such a shame only the box remains and in a pretty parlous state of repair ( the front section was coming adrift and we glued that back together straight away) .

Is this where the phrase “get on the blower” comes from?

There are some faint pencilled additions to the diagram here and there

We both searched for information about the telephone itself, and neither of us could find anything that resembled this set up. The box will get a thorough but gentle clean. It looks like it’s been home to a few mice at some point.