A Gold and Enamel Snuff Box, Gustav Wancke, Berlin, Circa 1800

Recently Haydn Williams has identified the bijoutier who was responsible for some of the most inventive and unusual early nineteenth-century gold boxes made in Berlin. The maker's mark GW in a rectangle flanked by cartwheels is indeed that of Swedish-born Gustav Wancke (Haydn Williams, 19th-Century Snuffboxes: The David and Mikhail Iakobachvili Collection, vol. II, London, 2025, p. 226).

Wancke was recorded in Berlin from 1800 and became a foreman two years later.

The network between bijoutiers based in Berlin seems to have been of similar importance to that between Hanau families in the bijouterie business: One of Wancke's apprentices was Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Weylandt, who had previously been apprenticed to Jean François Fregevize, (see also Haydn Williams, op. cit, vol. I, no. 288). Furthermore it is interesting to note that Wancke sometimes used the same decorative techniques as the Frères Jordan in Berlin at the same date, such as incorporating gold filigree or of bright-cut engraving on a matted ground.

For another gold and enamel box by Wancke with a different, very clever decoration based on textile design, also formerly in the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection, see Sotheby's Geneva, 16 May 2025, lot 1155.

For decades, this maker's mark was also attributed to Switzerland, similar to the marks of Gebrüder Toussaint in Hanau or Frères Jordan in Berlin.