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Lot Essay
Jean-George Rémond (1752-1830) was the son of a Protestant goldsmith from Hanau, a major center for the production of jewelry, clocks and enamel-painted snuffboxes, and the home of many Huguenot French jeweler and watchmaking families. He first travelled across Europe working as a journeyman in Paris, Berlin and London in the best European goldsmiths and automaton makers' workshops.
He finally settled in Geneva where he was officially admitted as a goldsmith and jeweler in 1783, founding a company called "Georges Rémond & Cie”. Over the following years he used different hallmarks: "GRC" under a foliate crown, "GRC" under a crown, "IGR & C". In 1792, Jean-Georges Rémond's partners - Joseph Guidon, David Gide, Laurent Guisseling and Jean-Noël Lamy - began working unofficially under the name "Guidon Rémond Gide & Co." using the "GRG" hallmark, the company was finally officially registered on 1 January 1796.
Between 1800 and 1801, Rémond Gide & Co produced a number of extremely luxurious snuffboxes with singing birds and pearl decorations, partly for the Chinese market, fond of this type of precise and highly entertaining mechanism. Denis Blondet joined Joseph Guidon and David Gide and a new company was created in January 1801. It took the name "Rémond Lamy & Co." and used the "RL&C" stamped on this snuffbox. This hallmark allows us to narrow the date of manufacture to the years 1801-1805, since in 1806 Jean-Georges Rémond, Jean-Noël Lamy, Laurent Gisseling, Pierre Mercier and Daniel Burton created another company, known as "Rémond Lamy Mercier & Co." Their hallmark "IGRC" in a horizontal lozenge was officially registered in Geneva in accordance with a Napoleonic decree of 1806, and used until 1811.
Geneva was at the crossroads of the important trade routes at a time when there were few accessible ways of crossing the Alps and so was visited by many foreign tourists and traders, particularly from China, Turkey and India attracted by the high quality of Swiss watchmakers.
The popularity of these enameled and pearl-set watches served to encourage the production of similarly decorated snuff-boxes and other objects of vertu enameled in strongly contrasting colors, sometimes with seed-pearl borders or overlaid with diamonds. These novelty boxes were made in the shape of fruit, animals, flowers, birds or, as in the present case, butterflies, and found favor with the mid and far eastern markets.
A similar snuff-box is illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, London, Faber & Faber, 1966, black & white pl. before p. 113, ill. 749 (Collection Wartski, London).
He finally settled in Geneva where he was officially admitted as a goldsmith and jeweler in 1783, founding a company called "Georges Rémond & Cie”. Over the following years he used different hallmarks: "GRC" under a foliate crown, "GRC" under a crown, "IGR & C". In 1792, Jean-Georges Rémond's partners - Joseph Guidon, David Gide, Laurent Guisseling and Jean-Noël Lamy - began working unofficially under the name "Guidon Rémond Gide & Co." using the "GRG" hallmark, the company was finally officially registered on 1 January 1796.
Between 1800 and 1801, Rémond Gide & Co produced a number of extremely luxurious snuffboxes with singing birds and pearl decorations, partly for the Chinese market, fond of this type of precise and highly entertaining mechanism. Denis Blondet joined Joseph Guidon and David Gide and a new company was created in January 1801. It took the name "Rémond Lamy & Co." and used the "RL&C" stamped on this snuffbox. This hallmark allows us to narrow the date of manufacture to the years 1801-1805, since in 1806 Jean-Georges Rémond, Jean-Noël Lamy, Laurent Gisseling, Pierre Mercier and Daniel Burton created another company, known as "Rémond Lamy Mercier & Co." Their hallmark "IGRC" in a horizontal lozenge was officially registered in Geneva in accordance with a Napoleonic decree of 1806, and used until 1811.
Geneva was at the crossroads of the important trade routes at a time when there were few accessible ways of crossing the Alps and so was visited by many foreign tourists and traders, particularly from China, Turkey and India attracted by the high quality of Swiss watchmakers.
The popularity of these enameled and pearl-set watches served to encourage the production of similarly decorated snuff-boxes and other objects of vertu enameled in strongly contrasting colors, sometimes with seed-pearl borders or overlaid with diamonds. These novelty boxes were made in the shape of fruit, animals, flowers, birds or, as in the present case, butterflies, and found favor with the mid and far eastern markets.
A similar snuff-box is illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, London, Faber & Faber, 1966, black & white pl. before p. 113, ill. 749 (Collection Wartski, London).