A jewelled gold and enamel boite-à-chiffre, Vienna, circa 1775

It seems plausible that the rose-cut diamond-set initials MT on the present box are those of Maria Theresa of Austria, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1740 until her death in 1780. A great patron and lover of the arts, in particular the decorative arts including lapidary works and bijouterie, the Empress supported many skilled craftsmen within her own empire and further afield. The present box is stylistically rather unusual in the combination of the finely painted enamel plumes and the pink ribbons with the more classical en grisaille putti on a stippled pink background that appears on Paris and (Huguenot) Berlin boxes slightly earlier.

Austrian enamel painters such as Philipp Ernst Schindler occasionally also worked in stippled enamel; see for example a signed portrait miniature in stippled enamel of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, on the interior of a box in the Iakobachvili collection (Haydn Williams, 18th-Century Snuff Boxes: The David and Mikhail Iakobachvili collection, vol. I, London, 2025, cat. no. 60, p. 88). The Viennese goldsmith responsible for the present box is yet to be identified, but the box is proof of the small number of inventive and high-quality boxes made in the Austrian capital in the 1770s and 1780s.