Treasure Chest and Ship Papers

[Josh88]

A friend of mine recently asked me to build a small treasure chest for her to use as a card holder at her wedding. After a couple hours of work and some scrap wood, I was finished and decided I needed more to keep myself busy. So I expanded on the chest idea and started making paper work to go along with her "ship"

I started off with a letter of Marque allowing herself and fiance to serve as privateers. All of the paperwork was made by me, though the letter is based on an actual letter's text and the ship I used as the base for theirs was the USS Constitution, better known as old ironsides. Since this is all being done as I come up with things I'm not too concerned with accuracy of everything or that time periods match up perfectly, so they're getting things from the british government, as well as the US, just so there is a variety. I'll post some more as I get things done.

Also as I post stuff, if anybody has other suggestions for paperwork that might be a good fit for a captain to throw in the chest I'd be glad to hear them since I'd like to try to fill it all up.

 

[Josh88]

This batch of photos starts off the "ship papers" section I think I'll either get some leather or some kind of heavy fabric and just make a jacket for them, we'll see what happens on time. I'm not sure about all the weathering on these. I'll be trying to print it on paper that already has some texture to it, and also on white, just to compare things and see how it all looks when it comes out. Some of it might be to heavy on here.

Page 1 the deed, specifying ownership and commander of the ship, a guarantee that it is fit to sail and various rights and restrictions on the open sea.

Page 2 the specifications for the ship, crew, sails, boats on board, etc.

Edit: seeing this on here makes me think I'm going to have to darken up most of the diagrams, they looked alright till here haha.

Page 3 the armaments on board, and a sketch of the marine commander.

Page 4 is are the senior officers and their titles, these are the bridal party and ideally I'll physically mailing this to each of them to sign and leave a message for the couple to have.

Page 5 is the passenger roster, made up of friends and people invited to the wedding.

Page 6+7 are the cargo manifest, still more to add to it, but it is a start

If anybody has any input, again on things to include or things you might change about these I'd love to hear them. Now it's back to work.

 

[epilepticsquirl]

what a cool idea. This immediately reminded me of Firefly. Dunno if you're familiar with the show, but they had all the ships papers in a leather case.

I take it this is a themed wedding?

 

[Barneyrfd]

@josh88: Very, very cool idea and very well done, nice job :thumbsup

The only minor, minor suggestion I could make is to see if you can fade or erode some of the rubber stamps a little more. A couple of them look just a little too crisp.

bfd

 

[DBCooper]

Here are some pirate papers I did centered around Treasure Island.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs002.jpg
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs006.jpg
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs004.jpg

Hope this fits here. Love the Chest. I always wanted to fill one up with maps, papers, old letters, and treasure and bury. I thought it would be neat to dig it up with the kids in a few years.

Best,
DBCooper

 

[Josh88]

what a cool idea. This immediately reminded me of Firefly. Dunno if you're familiar with the show, but they had all the ships papers in a leather case.

I take it this is a themed wedding?

Actually I'm quite familiar with the show, and I've made my own version of those papers, never could afford them and I had been following whitefall's work on them since he posted the originals over on propcircle. That was part of where the idea came from. I honestly don't know if it's themed or not she won't tell me much about it for some reason. Right now I'm a little stalled while they get me some more info. In the mean time since we both do theatre and have some rigging experience I'm tying various knots (get it, knots, wedding? haha) in short bits of rope to toss in there too.

 

[Underdog]

Love the ship and Firefly graphic work. The attention to detail si fantastic. Gets me to thinking about trying to make up a map, or some charts.

 

[sithcundman]

I like the "ship's papers" themed wedding paraphernalia, a nice idea very well executed.

Not related to these documents, but on the subject of Pirate (the high seas kind) paper props in general, there’s something I’m curious about. So, in the interests of friendly discussion, how much aging/distressing is actually necessary? I accept that such documents, Treasure Maps particularly, will suffer a certain amount of everyday wear and tear, but a letter from 1711 (for ease of calculation) should only look three hundred years old now. In 1711 it was brand new.
I suppose it depends on whether we’re creating props for Pirates then or ourselves now.

 

[DominoDoggy]

Nice job on the maps. Did you print them from scans from a book or create them from scratch?

 

[ladybijou]

Very cool idea! Thorough and creative.

 

[chuning]

Such a great bit of work. Thanks for sharing the fun.

 

[jsather89]

Here are some pirate papers I did centered around Treasure Island.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs002.jpg
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs006.jpg
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj87/dbcooper2/TreasureIslandDocs004.jpg

Hope this fits here. Love the Chest. I always wanted to fill one up with maps, papers, old letters, and treasure and bury. I thought it would be neat to dig it up with the kids in a few years.

Best,
DBCooper

Mr. Cooper, amazing stuff, as always.