A Gold and Enamel Snuff Box, Friedrich Fernau & Jean Daniel Obicker, Hanau, Circa 1805

Sotheby's, Geneva, 15th November, 1995, Lot 420;

Christie's London, 16 November 2010, lot 424

The maker's mark F&O in an oval is that of a cross-generational partnership of two Hanau gold-workers: records show that in 1798, the bijoutier Jean (Johann) Daniel Obicker (?–1823) began a partnership with the successful eighteenth-century Bijouteriefabrikant Friedrich Fernau (1740–1806). Jean Daniel was the son of the prominent Hanau goldsmith Esaias Obicker (1717–1802).

After Friedrich Fernau’s elder brother Esaias died in November 1795, Jean Daniel must have seemed to Fernau an ideal candidate to manage the firm. The successful partnership of Fernau and Obicker was dissolved by early 1806, shortly before Friedrich Fernau’s death on 15 May that year.

A certain similarity between the enamel colours and decoration on gold boxes made by Fernau & Obicker and some early boxes made by the Toussaint Brothers might be explained by the fact that the enameller Friedrich Wagenführer (1743-1818) worked for both firms: an extension of the joint tax freedom for Wagenführer and Friedrich Fernau was granted from 1798 to 1806, coinciding with the time when Fernau worked with Jean Daniel Obicker (A. Starp, 'Grosse Bijouterie in Hanau in the early 19th Century', in Haydn Williams, 19th-Century Snuffboxes: The David and Mikhail Iakobachvili Collection, vol. II, London, 2025, p. 220).