glory box

plural glory boxes · alternative glory-box

1. AustraliaNew ZealandA woman's storage box containing items saved for her wedding or married life.First known use 1915.

   1985, Janet McCalman, Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond, 1900-1965, Melbourne University Press, page 148, Every girl who hoped to marry had started early on her glory box, sewing and embroidering household linen, buying sheets and towels on cash order.

   3 more examples

   Trousseaux and glory boxes could be slowly built up while women were engaged in the paid workforce, before marriage heralded the loss of an independent income.

   2003, Jane Malthus, Chris Brickell, “Producing and Consuming Gender: The Case of Clothing”, in Barbara Lesley Brookes, Annabel Cooper, Robin Law, editors, Sites of Gender: Women, Men and Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890-1939, page 124

   ‘[…]You can work on my daughter′s glory box. She′s had to get a job in the pub and she hasn′t had time to finish it and she′s getting married in December.’

   2004, Kerry Greenwood, The Long Walk, unnumbered page

   She said that her mother brought them out to Australia in a baule — a huge glory box — along with blankets, kitchen utensils, crockery, and 32 litres of olive oil in tins. Tucked in this glory box, the linens travelled in the hull of a ship from Naples across oceans and seas, on a train from Sydney to Stanthorpe, by horse and cart to Applethorpe and later by ute to Brisbane.

   2011, Zoe Boccabella, Mezza Italiana, unnumbered page

   Synonyms: bottom drawer, hope chest