The letter boxes in the image above are most probably the original ones, from the date when the Art Deco style apartment block hosting them has been built, sometimes in the mid-1930s Bucharest. The veneer of each box is still well preserved, with the wood fibres arranged in something resembling a papyrus flower pattern, which is one of the classical Art Deco decorative motifs. This piece of furniture could easily be restored to its former glory and one must only hope that the proprietors of those apartments will be sensible enough to preserve it for the future, resisting the current fashionable temptations in Romania to replace period artefacts with characterless modern, “made in China”, accoutrements.
Valentin Mandache, architectural historian 