A Gold and Enamel Musical Snuff Box, Guidon, Rémond, Gide & Cie, Geneva, 1792-1800

The mirrored pair of this enamelled automaton box was sold Sotheby's London, The Collection of A Connoisseur, 14 July 2020, lot 15, and now belongs to the David Iakobachvili Collection (for more information see Haydn Williams, The David and Mikhail Iakobachvili Collection, 18th-Century Snuffboxes, London, 2024, no. 329).

Between 1792 and 1801 Jean-George Rémond (1752-1830), the goldsmith from Hanau, and his compatriots Jean-Noé Lamy and Laurent Guisseling, were in partnership in Geneva with the locally-trained stalwarts David Gide and Joseph Guidon. The relationship was not only a working one since the 1797 census records that all five families were also living on different floors of the maison Guidon in the rue du Cendrier. Professionally, the partnership was to prove most successful as attested by the number of beautiful snuff boxes and cases for automata struck with this mark, in the style that was to become known as ‘Geneva enamelling’ but which in fact contains many elements derived from Hanau. By 1801, however, it was decided not to renew the partnership and the two elements separated again with Rémond, Lamy and Guisseling moving to new premises.