A Pearl-Set Gold, Burgau Shell and Enamel Snuff Box, Frères Souchay, Hanau, Circa 1780

Sotheby's Geneva, 6 May 1981, lot 220;

Sotheby’s London, 7 June 2005, lot 42

The maker’s mark on the present lot is that of the Souchay brothers, Esay (1723–1791) and Marc-André (1730–1811) who owned the flourishing Hanau bijouterie company Frères Souchay, active since at least the 1770s (Seelig, Lorenz, ‘Ignaz Peter Krafft und die Hanauer Luxuswarenproduktion‘, Neues Magazin für Hanauische Geschichte (Hanau: Hanauer Geschichtsverein, 2018, pp. 85-88). After Esay Souchay left Hanau in 1788/1789, his brother Marc-André Souchay continued the business for around another decade. (Seelig, op. cit.) While most of the surviving gold boxes made by the firm so far seem to be enamel examples, not dissimilar to the work of the leading bijoutiers Les Frères Toussaint or Esaias Obicker, the Souchay brothers also seem to have experimented with other materials. A gold mounted milky hardstone snuff box overlaid with chased openwork in the Green Vaults in Dresden is struck with a presumably slightly earlier version of their mark on the front rim, with the initials divided by a point in between (Green Vaults, inventory no. 2010/3; see Ulrike Weinhold, Eine Hanauer Tabatiere im Grünen Gewölbe, in: Dresdener Kunstblätter 57 [2013], Nr. 4, S. 60-64; Seelig, op. cit.). The present gold-mounted burgau snuff box and the manner in which the panels on the lid have been mounted is reminiscent of the fashion for mounting burgau shell in Paris in the 1770s, which can be observed on a box dated 1777/78 by the eminent gold box maker Pierre-François Drais (1726-1788), incorporating burgau panels and similar circular gold apertures (sold Christie's London, 2 June 2015, lot 273). The present lot is a rare example of this style adapted in Hanau.