A painted enamel snuff box with raised gilding, possibly Christian Friedrich Herold, circa 1750

For details of Christian Friedrich Herold’s work as an enameller at Meissen and association with the Fromery workshops in Berlin, see Hugh Tait, British Museum Quarterly, vol. 25, 1962 , pp. 39-41.

Walter Holzhausen proved many years ago that enamellers working for Fromery took their designs for gold relief decoration from earlier medals and suspected that Herold worked in the same fashion (‘Email mit Goldauflage in Berlin und Meissen’, Der Kunstwanderer, January 1930). Several of the reliefs on the present box are based on identified medals. That on the base, partly repeated on the lid, is taken from a medal struck in 1704 to celebrate the taking of Traerbach by the Prince of Hesse (Gerard van Loon, Histoire Médallique des XVII Provinces des Pays Bas, 1736, vol. IV, p. 449); reliefs on the sides appear on a Nuremberg medal commemorating the relief of Barcelona by Charles III in 1706, designed by G.F. Nürnberger and Martin Brunner (1659-1725). It may be significant that the monogram MB which appears on the reliefs of the box was used on medals by Brunner. Further reliefs on the sides showing Mars, Hercules and Discord were popular themes for medals struck to commemorate the signing of a peace or treaty.

Nevertheless this interesting snuff box poses a number of questions since the mixed medallic sources do not point to one particular event which the box could have been made to celebrate as stylistically it appears too early to have been made to celebrate the Peace of Hubertusberg in 1763, suggested by the painting of St. Hubert on the interior of the lid. It should be noted, however, that the porcelain cup and saucer from the Franks Collection in the British Museum, signed by Herold and dated 12 September 1750, incorporates two reliefs which appear on the sides of this box in a purely decorative manner so this box may also have been intended as a celebration of Peace in a general sense.