I'm a big fan of Birch bark boxes. I've made a few of them, but it's not always easy to get decent bark here in the UK. I probably need to try a bit harder. I bought the marvellous book by Vladimir Yarish, which is inspirational, with fantastic colour photographs throughout. It's worth buying just for that, but it also contains step by step instructions on how to make a variety of containers and other objects (including shoes) from birch bark. Jarrod Stonedahl put a picture of a lovely antique tobacco box on his blog a while back.
One of the great things about this object is that it's quite small and therefore doesn't require a lot of bark. So I decided to have a go at making one. If you click on the picture, you can just about make out the stamped decoration.
It turns out that I had enough bark for two so I made another, this time with a bit of extra decoration inspired by Vladimir's book.
Today I visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and saw a fantastic example of a similar style. It's pretty dark and I only had my phone for pictures, so apologies for the poor quality.
More about the Pitt Rivers Museum later.
