Lot Essay
Joseph-Etienne Blerzy was apprenticed in 1750 to François-Joachim Aubert who also sponsored him when he became master in 1768. Blerzy must have died between 1806 and 1808. He was one of the best and most prolific gold box makers of the Louis XVI period. The Louvre owns 13 gold boxes and two sealing-wax cases by him, and others are to be found in the Cognacq-Jay Museum, the museum of Tours and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An enamelled gold snuff-box of 1784/1785 by him, very similar to the present one, is illustrated in Serge Grandjean, Les tabatières du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1981, no. 41, pp. 56-57.
The inventory number 168 struck on the bezel of the present box appears to confirm the date of 1781/1782 which is the same as Serge Grandjean's no. 37 (op. cit., pp. 54 and 55) struck with number 162, but for a discussion on the numbers on Blerzy's boxes, see Anna Somers Cocks and Charles Truman, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection - Renaissance jewels, gold boxes and objets de vertu, London, 1984, no. 79, pp. 238-239.
The inventory number 168 struck on the bezel of the present box appears to confirm the date of 1781/1782 which is the same as Serge Grandjean's no. 37 (op. cit., pp. 54 and 55) struck with number 162, but for a discussion on the numbers on Blerzy's boxes, see Anna Somers Cocks and Charles Truman, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection - Renaissance jewels, gold boxes and objets de vertu, London, 1984, no. 79, pp. 238-239.