In the Basque language a chest like this is a kutxa, and every Basque farmhouse kept one, some for the bed linen and some for food, the garai-kutxa for the year’s wheat and the gazi-kutxa for salted meat. Found in Béziers but made in the Spanish Basque Country in the 17th century, this very rare kutxa has survived more than three hundred years with its iron lock plate still in place and a sawtooth apron cut along its base, the whole surface worn and weathered to a soft, chalky grey. Chests were the most important furniture a Basque household owned, built heavy to hold what a family depended on through the winter and passed from one generation to the next with the house itself. Sylvie keeps it beneath the window in her study, a model ship sailing across the top and the family’s old letters folded away inside.
