Gold boxes at Hillwood

Magazine Antiques, March, 2003 by Liana Paredes Arend

(4.) Clare Le Corbeiller, European and American Snuff Boxes, 1730-1830 (Viking Press, New York, 1966), pp.9,19.

(5.) For example, the artist and engraver Jean du Viviers (or Duvivier, 1687-1761) published an album of designs for snufiboxes in Paris in 1719 and 1720 that incorporated designs reminiscent of garden ornament. These are illustrated in Henry Rene d'Allemagne, Les accessoires du costume et du mnobilier depuis le 13e sie cle... (Schemit, Paris 1928).

(6.) See Lo Corbeiller, European and American Snuff Boxes, p. 19.

(7.) Rosalind Savill, Six Enamelled Snuff-Boxes in the Wallace Collection," Apollo, vol. 111 (April 1980), p.304.

(8.) Sold at Christie's, London, May 19, 1925, Lot 32.

(9.) The sale of Frangnis Guillaume Tiron's stock was announced in December 1775 in the periodical Les Affiches de Paris. The great variety of objects for sale included all kinds of boxes, etuis, and jeweled accessories.

(10.) See Pictorial Dictionary of British Eighteenth Century Furniture Design, comp. Ellzabeth White (Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1990), pp. 269-270.

(11.) Permitted in an arret de conseil on May 4, 1756.

(12.) "Apprennez encore, monsieur Ia Russe, que les tabatibres ne sappellent plus que boittes, et il y a longtemps qua vous devriez le savoir! On a des boetes pour chaque saison. Celle d'hiver est plus lourde celle dete est le gem (Louis Sebastien Mereier, Tableau de Paris [1781 Amsterdam, 1783], vol.2, p. 209).

(13.) See Anne Odom and Liana Paredes Arend, A Taste for Splendor. Russian Imperial and European Treasures from tire Hillwood Museum (Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia, 1998), No. 52.

(14.) Henrietta Louise von Waldner, Baronnesse dOberKirch Memoirs of the Baroness d'OherKirch, ad. comte de Leonce Montbrison (London, 1852), voL 1, p.277.

(15.) Mercure de France, July 1776, p. 202.

(16.) See Ita Margaret Hogan, Anglo-Irish Music (Cork University Press, Cork, 1966), p.74.

(17.) The information about the earl of Rathdowne was provided by his great granddaughter the Honorable Elisabeth Batt in 1973, and is in the curatorial files of the Hillwood Museum and Gardens, Washington, D. C.

(18.) A platinum box in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg with similar scrolls in varicolored gold on a platinum background bears the mark of logan Keibel (see Zarengold: 100 Meistenverke der goldschmiede Kunst.../Gold of the Tsars, 100 Masterpieces of Goldsmith's Art of the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, ed. Fritz Falk [Arno]dsche, Stuttgart, 1995], pp. 189-190; sec also Odora and Arend, A Taste for Splendor, pp. 235-236, for an extensive discussion of this box).

(19.) See Odom and Arend, A Taste for Splendor, p.235.

(20.) For further information see Donald McDonald, A History of Platinum: From the Earliest Times to tire Eighteen-Eighties (Johnson Matthey, London, 1960), particularly Chapter 12 about platinum in Russia.

(21.) Joseph Florimond Loubat, Narrative of the Mission to Russia in 1866..., p. 359, quoted in Immanuel Moses Casanowicz, The Gustavus Vasa Fox Collection of Russian Souvenirs in tire United States National Museum (Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1910).