A rare Saint-Cloud silver-mounted Snuff Box, circa 1748
This rare Saint-Cloud snuff box is spectacle-shaped and mounted with silver. The exterior is moulded with stylised flowering stems, including the base. These are picked out in the Kakiemon palette of iron-red, blue, yellow and turquoise enamels. The interior lid is painted with two sprays of flowers in the same palette. The mount has a poinçon de charge mark for small works, and also the poinçon de décharge mark for the Paris assay master Antoine Leschaudel, 1744-50.
Loosely termed indianische Blumen (Indian flowers), particularly when applied to Meissen, this style of exotic moulded and painted flower decoration derives from designs printed onto fabrics arriving in Europe from Southern and South-East Asia. Combining these designs with Japanese colours was a uniquely European aesthetic.
Condition: No damage or restoration, just typical minor potting, firing and glazing anomalies, including pinholes, specks of dust, and a tiny clay tear to the interior. From manufacture, there is a small area to the interior which the glaze does not appear to have covered. Very minor wear to the enamels from handling. The hinge mechanism works well and the box opens and close neatly. From repeated use over the centuries, the mount on the cover has small dents and impressions in places, however these do not detract.
Dimensions: (Including mounts) Height 4.3 cm; Length 7.7 cm; Width 4.9 cm
Ref. See Christie’s ‘Elizabeth Parke Firestone Collection Part I’, New York, 21-22 March 1991, lot 354, for a near identical example. A note in the catalogue is given for Barbara Beaucamp-Markowsky, Boîtes en Porcelaine des manufactures européenes au 18e siècle, Fribourg, 1985, no. 390).
Discovering the Secrets of Soft-Paste Porcelain at the Saint-Cloud Manufactory, c.1690-1766, Bertrand Rondot, Ed. (BGC / Yale, 1999).
Eighteenth-century French Porcelain in the Ashmolean Museum, Aileen Dawson (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1996).
Seventeenth & Eighteenth Century French Porcelain, George Savage (Barrie & Rockliff, 1960).