Born in Neuwunsdorf on 7 April 1736, Johann Christian Neuber was apprenticed at the age of seventeen to Johann Friedrich Trechaon. On 13 July 1762 he became a master of the goldsmith's guild in Dresden, and in 1769 he succeeded his father-in-law Heinrich Tadell as director of the Green Vaults. By 1775 he had been appointed Hofjuwelier to the court of Friedrich Augustus III. The earliest dated piece by Neuber is a box formerly in the Green Vaults which bore the date 1770. Neuber's workshops produced boxes, watchcases, chatelaines, carnets and chains. He appears to have been prosperous enough to rent several quarries and between 1786 and 1798 he had seven apprentices. However, in 1788 he had to hold a lottery to alleviate his financial position. Neuber died a poor man at his son's house in Eibenstock on 1 January 1808.

The technique of Zellenmosaik appears to have been developed by Heinrich Tadell, a goldsmith working in Dresden from 1739. To judge from boxes supplied to Catherine the Great, the technique evolved towards the end of Tadell's career, and a signed example dated 1769, the year of his death, is recorded (cf. Snowman, 1966, fig.550). The similarity between that box and the present example suggests that Neuber was working in his father-in-law's workshop at about that date. Later in his career, Neuber turned to a more geometric use of the stones