A VERY FINE GERMAN ROCOCO TINTED SHELL, BONE AND GOLD SNUFF-BOX

Details
A VERY FINE GERMAN ROCOCO TINTED SHELL, BONE AND GOLD SNUFF-BOX
BERLIN, INDISTINCTLY MARKED, CIRCA 1750
Oval box, the cover and base engine-turned with radiating rippled wavy sunbursts, the lid encrusted with sculpted miniature panels of tinted shell and bone depicting a scène champêtre with a seated lady and a kneeling gallant in a landscape next to a countryside house, the sides engine-turned with matching vertical rippled stripes
70mm. (2¾in.) wide

Lot Essay

The technique of encrustation of tinted shell and bone into an engraved or engine-turned gold ground was very fashionable amidst the Berlin goldsmiths under Frederick the Great, as one can see in the works by Daniel Baudesson or Pierre-Aldebert Griot. A very similar carnet-de-bal by the latter is in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, inv. no. 66,142.

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