Before I commence the description of this lovely and rare box can I just ask is Jabez a great name or is it just me!
As I say this is a rare box which to me seems strange for two reasons. 
Firstly they were really a quite prolific company in their various guises and secondly there lovely oil painting boxes do turn up but almost anything connected to watercolour is rarely encountered. 
Perhaps another reason is that Mr Barnard was born in 1800 and died in 1894. He surely had a lot of time to make watercolour boxes!
They must have supplied very many Watercolour boxes in wood as well as metal like this one. 
 
A ceramic palette originally from a wooden box I have shows there name so they must have sold boxes similar and in competition to the many other suppliers present in London at the same time. 
This box I believe was made around 1870 to the early 80s and is of a very good quality showing a beautiful bright and stylish label. 
There are as you can see a good range of pans and all of these are ceramic. 
 
As you know the great usefulness these have is that when empty they can be washed and refilled with any colours of your preference. 
As to condition the box shows marks and scratches but to my mind nothing serious. Internally there is of course some paint loss but again to my mind nothing terrible. Indeed the box could be put back to work immediately and if looked after ie kept clean and dry and used sensitively will last all of anyones painting career. 
I haven’t tried the paints but I’d bet they work well. 
 
The box functions very well opening and closing with good hinges. 
It is a great box filled with potential as I guess many are but this one is different. It is also filled with romance. All of those people who have used it, all of those painting trips and all of those wonderful scenes long before those millions of cars and all the stress of modern life. 
 
Another wonderful thing to me personally about a paint box especially and old one is that whenever you open it you always see the best in people as somehow all of that history lives on in that thing you hold. I can’t imagine we could ever put a price on that.