JOHANN-CHRISTIAN NEUBER, DRESDEN, CIRCA 1780

In April 1786, Neuber advertised his trademark stone-cabinet boxes in the Journal der Moden, describing "oval and circular boxes for gentlemen and ladies, as stone-cabinets, mounted in gold and lined with gold, of all Saxon country-stones, such as carnelians, chalcedonies, amethysts, jaspers, agates, and petrified wood, numbered, together with an inventory of the names, and where they can be found; a box for gentlemen (Mannsdose) costs 150-300 Reichsthaler, a box for ladies (Damesdose) 90-150 Reichsthaler" (W. Holzhausen, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, 1935, p. 12). A very similar box was sold at Christie's, Geneva, November 14, 1995, lot 68, and another example is in the Royal Saxon Collection of the Green Vaults, Dresden (illustrated in Das Grunes Gewölbe zu Dresden, 1994, illus. p. 232).