Towards the end of my senior year of high school (class of '72) all the girls in the class were set upon by a hoard of salesmen pushing them to get cookware and dishes and crystal and all manner of crap to fill out their Hope Chests. I’m pretty sure that term was actually used. I did sit thru the sales pitch so I could get the small keepsake chest as a gift. Since I was broke, living at home, planning to go to college, and had never dated (shy - very shy in those days) there was no question of me being talked into any large purchase.
Meanwhile, over the years, I managed to accumulate bits and pieces so when I finally married (at 29) I not only had everything I needed to set up housekeeping, I was also buying 2 houses. I admit, there were times I wished I had a nice chest for storing bulky bedding, but I never cared enough to look into buying one.
Be that as it may - did you or anyone you know actually have a Hope Chest? Do you know of anyone younger than about 50 who’s even heard of them? Google returns images of what are being called storage benches, so it appears the term has not persisted.
No, I was a foster kid so waaay out of my grasp. I heard of them, knew of girls who had them, heard of boys who were making them in shop (girls were not allowed in shop) for their girlfriends. The practice had faded out by the time I finished college and was marrying. I’m sure my daughter has heard of them but as a historic artifact of a different age.
When I was finishing high school, (class of '63) the acquisition of a Hope Chest was uppermost in everyone’s mind. I don’t recall any sales pitch. But there were plenty of catalogs arriving in the mail advertising them.
Some of my friends received a Hope Chest as a birthday or Christmas gift. I always wanted one, but of course it never happened. (I was not surprised by that)
When I downsized several years ago, I did buy a “blanket chest” to store linens. To be honest, if a Hope Chest was to store things needed for a future home it would have to be huge and not the size of my blanket chest, nor the Hope Chests that I remember.
By the late 1970s, the assumption by parents in our socio-economic bracket was that
a) no girl was going to be doing her first stint at doing her own home cooking in her own new home for herself and her new husband. she’d instead be doing her first stint at home cooking in her off-campus rental that she’ll end up sharing with other college juniors or seniors after a couple years in the dorms.
b) hence not a “hope chest” but a starter set of kitchenware, most likely to be hand-me-downs from the family-of-origin kitchen, although a set of matching dishware and flatware wasn’t out of the question (especially if on sale from some outlet store).
My parents were perhaps a notch more progressive in having the same attitude towards their male child, fomented less (I think) by their observation that I had behaviors etc that had caused my classmates to call me sissy and whatnot than by the fact that my dad cooked, they’d taught both of us kids to cook and paid us to do so for a couple years when they both worked late, and it was more economical to cook than to be buying take-out. So I got a starter set, the more durable pieces of which I still own and use nearly half a century later.
When I graduated from high school in 1981, they were still being advertised in magazines- but I didn’t know anyone who had one or even wanted one. To some extent, that may have been because I grew up in NYC. Who had the space to store a trousseau for years before it was needed ? ( and there’s a concept that almost certainly disappeared right along with the hope chest.) Hope chests were useful in particular times and places, just like bridal showers - mostly when people ( or at least daughters) didn’t leave their parents’ home until they got married and they had to outfit an entire household all at once rather than one person bringing the flatware from the apartment they shared with roommates and the other person bringing the pots and so on.
No, late 1970’s. As a graduation gift, my parents gave me a then-fancy calculator. When I graduated college, a string of pearls. Hard to say which helped me set up my household better.
I graduated in 1995. Debutante Balls were still a thing, but Hope Chests were long, long gone. Nor did any girl have a China or Silver pattern picked out.
I must be the first one to post that they have one.
Well, I don’t have one but my wife does. It was made for her by her grandfather when she was in grade school. It was made as a toy box, something that her mom requested apparently. About the size and shape of a WWII foot locker but with a back to it so it looks like a bench. After she outgrew it it became her hope chest. When I met her (she was 21, I was 19) she had all manner of junk in it. I had no idea such things existed. Now, 20 years later, it still has all manner of junk in it and sits in storage because of course we have no actual use for it but it was made by her grandfather so we’ll never get rid of it. Which I understand, of course, but it’s big and fugly and we have no real room for it.
I was born in 1983. I have never known anyone who had one, even among my older relatives. I have heard of them, though, and in fact I recall a mention of one in the book Reviving Ophelia, written by a therapist for teenage girls in the '90s, as something a patient of hers had. I remember thinking that was odd; it seemed like something that had died out long ago.
Ditto. Not sure where I gained the knowledge and I’m not certain what would go into one but I’m aware of it being a teen girl thing to own though I don’t know anyone who has had one
Mary Pipher, my therapist while she was writing that very book. Great, insightful book, but she got so successful (and wealthy) that she ditched IRL patients.
I guess this is my comeuppance to her. Still an important book, IMHO.
My family had one when I was growing up. IIRC, my mom called it a hope chest or a cedar chest interchangeably. (I’m not absolutely certain that it was a true hope chest as described in the OP.) We used it to store winter clothes in the summer and vice versa.
The first one, a full sized chest, is really beautiful. It solid cedar wood, with the sides carved all over with vines/flowers. It was my grandmother’s Hope Chest, and used as such. Throughout her teen years she had gradually acquired and embroidered pillowcases and other bed linens and tea towels and such for her first home when she married. She died when I was fifteen, and she left it to me. It sits at the foot of our bed and holds heavy comforters for winter and such. It’s also a great place to sit while putting on stockings and shoes – very handy!
The other chest is one of miniature ones that the Lane company used to give out to all the girls in the local towns when they graduated from high school. (This was a thing back in the early 70s.) I suppose the idea was to inspire you to want to get one of their full sized ones, but neither I or any of my friends did that I know of. It’s maybe 8" X 5" X 4". Also cedar wood, but completely smooth and plain. I’ve always kept assorted ‘treasures’ in it on my dresser.
Oh, along those lines: the local jeweler also gave all the senior girls a teaspoon in their ‘chosen’ pattern. Stainless, not sterling, but still nice. Again a ploy to get us to ask for gifts in that pattern as graduation presents, I’m sure. Again, mostly a failed effort, except that I still have my spoon all these decades later and use it all the time. It’s my ‘special’ spoon for when I’m not feeling well and make cocoa.
My mom had one, a Lane cedar hope chest. But I and none of my sisters got one, I remember a few HS girls were gifted one. My mom put her old photo albums and and christening gowns, first communion pieces etc in there too.
When my folks downsized it was mostly empty and we gave it to a niece, kinda forced it on her really. It reeked of mothballs and had Gmas gallstones in a bottle in it. Lol. Always thought I’d want it myself but no space for a blanket chest. Instead I shipped my dads dresser to my house, it’s my sweater chest.
That’s the very one I had. I used it to store special letters, back when people routinely put pen to paper and used stamps and all that. Unfortunately, it got lost during one of my many moves in the Navy. For all I know, it was swiped by the packing crew, tho I have had entire boxes go missing. Such is life…
Graduated in ‘87. I also received a little Lane cedar chest. I think it’s around here, somewhere, filled with notes and trinkets.
My mom and dad received a full bedroom set from her parents when they married in 1957. The set included a blanket chest, which she still has. It holds blankets and random keepsake articles of clothing from when my sister and I were little.
She also has her mother’s hope chest. It’s the extra bedding storage chest at the cabin.
That’s how I’ve always thought of them. And I was graduated from high school in '69.
Maybe they hung on later in some areas than in others.
We had a cedar chest used to store blankets and such. I’ve still got it, and still so use it. But I never thought of it as a hope chest; we always called it ‘the cedar chest’ or ‘the blanket chest’, and I don’t think my mother had it before she married.
I definitely think that it was more common to have a “nice” cedar chest back in they day, specifically to keep the moths out of the nice wool blankets. But a cedar chest isn’t a Hope Chest. The point of a Hope Chest (which may be made of Cedar) is to hold all the linens you embroidered for your future home, back when girls of a certain social class would do that sort of thing. It might also contains any silverware you were gifted in “your” pattern. I honestly associate this more with the pre-WW2 era than after: it sounds to me like the Lane chests were an attempt to capitalize on the older tradition.
I was born in 1977, and my sister in 1975. She certainly never had a hope chest, and I don’t think my mother (1940) had one, either. But we knew what they were from reading historical fiction.
