So I was snooping through my attic this morning and found an old trunk of stuff that belonged to my late grandmother. In it, I found this little box full of her old sewing stuff and now I'm wondering if this is a Bento box. Help?

It looks like a bento box to me, too

Bento box or jewelery box. Perhaps taking a photo of the inside will help more?

Ahh, that would mean getting back up into the attic...
Lol it has three trays. The top and second have dividers in them, I guess to keep certain foods apart. The bottom tray has no dividers...I've never seen a bento box so I don't know if this is one...I'm going to assume it is though. That's awesome, I'm in possession of an antique bento box.

Sounds like a bento box to me, though truthfully I've never actually seen one up close. But the undivided tray is probably for rice.

i think its a bento box, juding by the picture and your description of the inside. Modern bento's arn't much different, other than the material they are made from and they now come in more variety of sizes. This appears to be a traditional bento box. Are there any markings along the underside? There may be a referenece to the maker which would indicate exactly what its original purpose was. And be careful leaving it in the attic. Wood warps with exposure to moisture and varying temperature. You may have found a little treasure, and you wouldn't want it to get ruined. Not to mention its from your grandmother, so thats special in itself.

the looks of it reminds me of the Bento Box on the Hana Yori Dango (TV Drama) so yeah, I'm going with bento box. It's lovely btw

No, there weren't any marking on the inside, but then again I only glanced at the inside. I'll have to go back up and get it. The inside trays were all a reddish-orange colour, but that's about it.

I've seen this tiered box most often at New's Year when the special New Year's Food (Osechi) is served in them. When it is filled up with all the colorful foods against the red lacquer background, it makes a very pretty picture. Each tier will hold an assortment of foods that can be spread out for everyone to partake in. The undivided one would probably hold rice, as Hairann mentions, but not plain white rice. It will either be special osekihan (a red bean, sticky rice reserved for special occasions) or some other special style rice like chirashi zushi. I'm making myself hungry thinking of all this.


Now a days, most of these boxes are made of modern plastic designed to take the wear and tear of modern use. You can still buy the handcrafted lacquer boxes but they are overall, rather expensive and require special care. If you have a traditional style one, it will be made of wood and then covered in real lacquer. It will have that woody smell. If you are fortunate to have a real lacquer ware, special care will be needed to store and clean it. Also, certain foods are not to be directly on the wood as it will eat away the lacquer.

Hope this helps.

How big is it? My grandmother had old sewing boxes that had the different tiers and such. They weren't bento boxes, but decorative boxes that held the sewing items so the boxes could be left out and would look a bit like a piece of decorative furniture. That's why I was wondering how big it was. It is very pretty. Are the decorations some sort of inlay or are they painted on?