A VERY FINE AND RARE LOUIS XV JEWELLED VARI-COLOUR GOLD SNUFF-BOX

BY FRANOIS MARTEAU, MARKED, PARIS 1743/1744, WITH THE CHARGE AND DISCHARGE MARKS OF LOUIS ROBIN 1738-1744, THE PLAQUE INSIDE THE COVER REPLACED, MARKED WITH THE FRENCH POST-1919 THIRD STANDARD MARK FOR GOLD

Details

A VERY FINE AND RARE LOUIS XV JEWELLED VARI-COLOUR GOLD SNUFF-BOX
by Franois Marteau, marked, Paris 1743/1744, with the charge and discharge marks of Louis Robin 1738-1744, the plaque inside the cover replaced, marked with the French post-1919 third standard mark for gold
Cartouche-shaped box with slightly bomb sides, the cover, sides and base with cartouches chased and engraved with a stylized leaf and flowerhead pattern on a sabl ground, within borders of reeded rocaille scrolls and foliage in two-colour gold, that on the cover set with diamonds and rubies and decorated with a large butterfly and a small dragonfly chased and applied with rubies and diamonds, hovering over flowers studded with rubies, diamonds and emeralds, the diamond-set thumbpiece on the cover shaped as a bow and echoed on the base as a foliate rocaille studded with diamonds and emeralds
3 in. (77 mm.) wide

Provenance

Sotheby's, Zurich, 23 November 1978, lot 23 (SF 105,000).

Lot Essay

Boxes by Franois Marteau who registered his mark in 1741 and died in 1757 are of outstanding rarity. In their introduction to Tabatires, botes et tuis [...] du Louvre (Paris, 1930, p. VII), H. Nocq and C. Dreyfus describe the almost unique character of Marteau's mark: "Nous n'avons vu qu'une seule fois le poinon de Franois Marteau, dans une bote d'une beaut exceptionnelle d'ailleurs, en or cisel sur pice, avec ornements de rubis." This may refer either to the present box or to the only other recorded box by Marteau, a rectangular but stylistically very close gold snuff-box of the same year 1743/1744, in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 125, no. 229). A design for a snuff-box clearly related to the present box was formerly in the D. David-Weill Collection, then sold Sotheby's, Geneva, 14 November 1984, lot 207.

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