A SAXON GOLD-MOUNTED ROCK-CRYSTAL AND BURGAU LACQUER SNUFF-BOX
Lot 908

A SAXON GOLD-MOUNTED ROCK-CRYSTAL AND BURGAU LACQUER SNUFF-BOX

DRESDEN, CIRCA 1750, WORKSHOP OF HEINRICH TADDEL

Price Realised

GBP 3,525

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A SAXON GOLD-MOUNTED ROCK-CRYSTAL AND BURGAU LACQUER SNUFF-BOX
Dresden, circa 1750, workshop of Heinrich Taddel
Rectangular rock-crystal snuff-box, with bevelled lid and base, decorated in vari-colour gold, burgau and painted lacquer with Chinoiserie scenes of ladies seated in pavillions within a trellis border, the sides decorated in the same technique with cockerels and Chinamen, the red gold cagework mounts engraved with a formal foliate design, with applied rose spray thumbpiece
2¾ in. (70 mm.) wide

Henry Nyburg; Sotheby's, Zurich, 7 November 1975, lot 15.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 18 December 1978, lot 140.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, Geneva, 14 November 1984, lot 359.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, Geneva, 15 May 1986, lot 18 (to Dreesmann).
Dr Anton C. R. Dreesmann (inventory no. F-244).

Specialist note

This type of box, painstakingly decorated in gold and shimmering burgau shell, has previously been attributed to Johann Martin Heinrici, a painter, enamellist, chemist and engraver at the Meissen factory from 1742. It was not until 1991 that Charles Truman reattributed these boxes to Taddel.
Heinrich Taddel (or Dattel) is recorded as a master goldsmith in Dresden from 1739, the year in which he was appointed director of the Green Vaults, the treasury of the Electors of Saxony and Kings of Poland. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, the famous Johann Christian Neuber (see lot 947).
Five other boxes in this technique, two of them signed by Taddel, have been published:
Three are in the Gilbert Collection, London, illustrated and described in C. Truman, The Gilbert Collection of Gold Boxes, Los Angeles, 1991, pp. 182-187, nos. 61-63, and two are in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, Woodbridge, 1990, plates 611, 634-640.