A two-colour gold snuff box, Pierre Cerneau, Paris, 1767

Pierre Cerneau appears to have been a former employee of the gold box maker Noel Hardivilliers who acted as sponsor when Cerneau became master goldsmith on 24 March 1762, both living at the same address on the pont au Change. Cerneau lacked the official qualifications, but together with three other candidates was admitted on payment of 3000 livres for the poor of the corporation. He moved to quai Pelletier in 1766. By 1774, he is noted in the almanac as: Cerneau, pont St Michel, à la Croix de Malthe, connu pour les bijoux garnis, les cristaux, cailloux, etc. The same year he is listed as 233rd in importance in the Corporation out of 300, as might be expected for someone who was most probably, from the above description, by that date mainly a mounter. Indeed the few surviving gold boxes struck with Cerneau's mark all date from the mid 1760s including the glorious gold and enamel box of 1763/4 in the Wallace Collection, painted with subjects after Greuze (Truman, Catalogue of Gold Boxes, 2013, no. 30). He later moved to pont St Michel where his wife Marie Aimée Dodillon's burial is recorded on 28 April and his own death on 17 December 1783.