A four-coloured gold snuff box, Les Frères Toussaint, Hanau, circa 1760
Auction Closed
November 6, 07:36 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 EUR
Lot Details
Description
rectangular, all sides chased with pastoral scenes, classical ruins or trophies of love and harvest en quatre couleurs, on a sunburst ground within frames of scrolls, the spandrels chased with flowers on a sablé ground, Hanau marks including traces of maker's mark LFT and plough charge mark, later French hibou control marks,
8,1 cm; 3 1/8 in. wide
overall weight 200 gr, 6,43 oz
The present box is hallmarked with the earliest set of marks recorded for Les Frères Toussaint. It was only a few years ago that the brothers Charles (1720-1790) and Pierre-Etienne Toussaint (1726-1803/1806) were discovered as the leading 18th century bijoutiers and gold box makers in Hanau in South Germany. Of Huguenot descent, the brothers had arrived in Hanau from Berlin in 1752. By 1762, they employed several German, Genevois and other foreign craftsmen, making Hanau an important centre for Galanteriewaren (small precious objects with a function) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A number of elaborately chased multicoloured gold boxes from the 1760s, stylistically imitating the work of Parisian goldsmiths of the period, are to be found in museum collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, also featuring the maker’s mark and a mark imitating the Paris charge mark of Eloy Brichard, 1756-62 (Lorenz Seelig, Eighteenth century Hanau gold boxes, Silver Society of Canada Journal, 2015, vol. 18, p. 36-37; MET accession no. 48.187.422).
