A pair of gold and pietra dura buckles, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, circa 1770

each circular gold disc slightly domed and inlaid with a spray of brightly-coloured hardstone flowers and leaves within a border of red carnelian and white chalcedony pellets, the backs with clasps and buckle fittings

minute gap between gold panel and buckle mount, otherwise good condition.
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Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), Court Jeweller in Dresden, specialised in creating Galanteriewaren (useful but precious objects) which combined locally-mined hardstones with delicate work in gold. His speciality was the creation of distinctive and exquisite hardstone marquetry, a technique which he employed for gold boxes but also for items of jewellery and smaller objects of vertu. 

This would appear to be the only known buckle by Neuber to survive. That Neuber made and sold buckles is recorded in his well-known advertisement of 1786 in the Journal der Luxus und der Mode where ‘Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s shoe, hat and neck buckles, in gold, silver and with stones, at different prices and in the latest fashion’ are listed. In his monograph on Neuber, Walter Holzhausen mentions a shoe buckle which had recently been seen in the Dresden trade which subsequently seems to have disappeared (Walter Holzhausen, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, 1935). No buckles are listed in Alexis Kugel's catalogue raisonné but he does record a number of similar buttons (Alexis Kugel, Gold, Japer and Carnelian, Johann Christian Neuber at the Saxon Court, London, 2012, no. 218-20, p. 374-375).

It is not surprising that so many of Neuber’s smaller works, the Galanteriewaren, should have vanished over the years in comparison with the boxes as it is far easier for studs, buttons or buckles to be lost or discarded when fashions changed. 

The design of the buckle is relatively sophisticated particularly in the colour variations to be seen on the tulip and rose in the central motifs. It is unusual that the border is of simple red and white stones (both the carnelian and chalcedony regularly used by Neuber and Stiehl) and does not incorporate Neuber’s celebrated simulated pearls as do most of the extant buttons. It has been suggested that perhaps the buckle might have been made as a gift for a member of the Austrian Imperial family, whose colours were white and red.