There’s a delicious little book I read a few years back called “The Red Leather Diary.” It’s about an UWS girl who one day (in 2006) spots a load of steamer trunks from her building’s basement discarded in the dumpster. She and her neighbors dumpster dive to find the treasures that await, and in one steamer trunk she unearths a red leather diary. The diary contains the adventures of a teenage girl growing up in the same building on the UWS in the Roaring Twenties. The UWS girl, who is book’s author, painstakingly searches to locate the diary’s author and then interviews her to supplement the diary with the author’s memories. It’s a really wonderful book.

This is the first thing I think about when I think about old trunks. And then I think about brides of the past bundling up their their wedding trousseaus. Ladies filling their trunks to set off on adventures abroad. Families packing up their trunks to make it big out West. Adventure, journey, romance, excitement.

You can understand why I love seeing an old steamer trunk still used today.

via HGTV

Readymade, via Renest

Source unknown

Lola et Moi Home Tour, via Design*Sponge

Charity's Gramercy Apartment, Salvaged Grace Home Tour

I remember being at an antique store with my mother (I must have been 8 or 9) and in the back of the store there was this ginormous Chinese antique traveling trunk. It was twice or even three times the size of any of the trunks on this page. The shop owner had affixed a large plate of glass atop and made the chest into a dining table. I’ve never seen anything like it since, it was spectacular.