A gold-mounted lacquer and piqué cagework snuff box, Louis Roucel, Paris, 1763/1764

A similar cinnabar red lacquer box decorated with black lacquer and gold piqué panels mounted in pierced gold borders was made by Nicolas-Antoine Vallière, Paris, 1766-1768. Formerly in the Sir Chester Beatty collection, it now belongs to the Thyssen Bornemisza Collection (Anna Somers Cocks, Charles Truman, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Renaissance jewels, gold boxes and objets de vertu, London, 1984, no. 65, pp. 210-211). Another very interesting comparable can be found in the collections of the Musée du Louvre: a gold-mounted cinnabar lacquer box of very similar shape, style and dimensions was made only two years prior to the present box (OA 7636), the sides also decorated with small black lacquer roundels of piqué posé phoenixes and flowers such as chrysanthemums.

One of the most important orfèvres-bijoutiers of his time, Louis Roucel did not become master by Royal prerogative until 23 August 1763, sponsored by Alexis Porcher, a few years after his first recorded works. In 1759 Roucel is recorded as living (and undoubtedly working) in the house of Jean Ducrollay in the place Dauphine, whence les Affiches de Paris announced on 12 January 1764 that he had moved to the quai de l’Horloge, près de la porte du Palais, au Gros Raisin, au Ier where he remained until 1776, the year following the death of his wife. Between 1763 and 1776 Roucel’s name frequently appeared in the records of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, receiving 4,800 livres for jewels supplied on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin to Marie Antoinette in 1770. Louis Roucel’s death is recorded on 6 March 1787 in the bourg of Puteaux, then a small village over the Seine to the west of Paris.