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Lot Essay
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.
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.