According to A. Kenneth Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, London, 1966, pp. 71-72, "Gouers was one of the most celebrated and sought-after makers of snuff-boxes and tabatières-à-portrait in Paris during the second and third decades of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, we know very little of this craftsman's history apart form the fact that the king, who commissioned him again and again, must have held his work in high esteem. [...] His official appointments were Orfèvre ordinaire de la Reine and Marchand orfèvre joaillier de leurs Majestés." Snowman also points out that boxes by Gouers are "very rare indeed".
It is interesting to see how fashionable Japanese lacquer was at the French Court as early as in the 1730s. The technique of mura nashiji was developped in Japan in the 1680s and apparently so popular in Europe as to be copied only fifty years later by Parisian lacquer craftsmen. One may conjecture that these French artists must have seen Japanese originals in the collection of one of the very few extremely wealthy French connaisseurs able to afford such highly prized, rare and exotic objets.