Leather Bound Box Files for 1904 De Dion-Bouton Vintage Car

We were commissioned with a wonderful project at the end of 2020 which was to produce a set of 4 leather clamshell boxes for a 1904 De Dion-Bouton vintage car.

A regular on the London to Brighton vintage car run, two of the boxes were to hold the medals of the classic car event as well as the programme for each of the years that car had run it (successfully completing it each time).

For both of these boxes we created a medal holder that was attached to the inner front cover.

It had 2 parts to it. The actual medal holder, which had circles made to fit the medals, and then a cover that screwed on to the holder with that held the medals in place. Access was simply a matter of unscrewing the nickel plated screw caps and the cover came off. 

Within the box was a very large 100mm ring binder mechanism that would hold all the events programmes for which it toke part as well as spring clip to keep them all in place.

The 3rd box was to keep all the historical documents of the car in. This was of equal size to the previous two London to Brighton boxes, but in the place of the medal holder had a document pocket. The ring binder mechanism was also smaller on this, though still a very large 65mm D ring binder mechanism and we again included a spring clip to keep the binder documents in place and flat. 

The 4th box was to keep the service records for the car. This clamshell box was again the same size as the first three clamshell boxes but had nothing on the inner cover. The service record box though (appropriately for the cars age) had a 100mm Q ring binder mechanism. 

All four clamshell boxes were covered and bound in sage green leather on the outer cover and we used black buckram on the inner cover and trays, this was chosen to match the cars colour. The De 1904 Dion-Bouton logo, the registration number Y96 and the title of the boxes were hot gold foiled onto the cover and spine of the boxes.

These were bespoke and custom made by Jackie Hartnack at Hartnack & Co. If you would like something similar for your classic or vintage car, click the contact us button above and let's start a conversation. Our classic car page can be found here - Vehicle document folders