Sophie von der Goltz
Head of Sale
Lot 88
A rare Continental gold-mounted snuff box and cover decorated in imitation of lacquer, mid 18th century
3 July 2025, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £3,200 inc. premium
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Raphael Machiels
Associate Specialist
Ghislaine Howard
Sale Coordinator
A rare Continental gold-mounted snuff box and cover decorated in imitation of lacquer, mid 18th century
The main section made up of hard-paste porcelain, the cover of soft-paste porcelain, applied with detailed open work mosaic decoration of gold and mother-of-pearl slivers in resin, 3cm high, 6.2cm diam. at base (some losses to decoration)
Footnotes
This sort of technique is most often associated with the work of Johann Martin Heinrici (1711-1786) who worked at the Meissen manufactory between 1742 and 1757, and again after 1761, but was also associated with Heinrich Taddel (1714-1794) due to an amethystine quartz snuff box with his name engraved on the rim in the Gilbert Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (LOAN:GILBERT.400-2008).
Three boxes decorated with this type of technique are illustrated by Haydn Williams (ed.), 18th-Century Snuffboxes, The David & Mikhail Iakobachvili Collection, 2024, pp. 70f, nos. 42-44. Williams notes that there is also a gold box in the State Hermitage Museum decorated in a similar manner with a Paris discharge mark for 1738-44, making it possible that this type of decoration could also have originated in France, instead of Germany.
Several boxes attributed to Heinrici are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Object Number: 1982.60.341, Object Number: 55.216.3 and Object Number: 1974.356.307.
