Box

In eighteenth-century Europe, Paris led the production of high-quality luxury goods. Parisian goldsmiths created a wide range of small, personal articles such as snuffboxes; étuis to hold sealing wax, tweezers, or utensils for sewing; souvenirs which contained thin ivory tablets for note taking, shuttles for knotting trim, and containers for cosmetics or candies.

The last major innovation in the decoration of gold boxes was engine turning. Machine engraving was executed on a tour à guillocher or rose engine. The work piece revolved in place while the cutter – fitted into a slide or compound rest – traced the desired pattern, determined by a shaped metal disc or rosette placed against the surface.

The perfection of engine turning circa 1768, essentially standardized the decoration of gold boxes. Although frequently enhanced with panels of translucent enameled, a significant number of boxes were made which relied only on the effect of the turned panels and varicolored gold ornamentation of which this box is an excellent example.

Here, panels on the cover, sides, and base have been turned to create a grain-like or barleycorn motif which remained popular well into the 19th century, either plain or as a ground for translucent enamel. The use of floral borders in different colors of gold and the classical motifs of drapery swags between the side panels is typical of Parisian boxes of the 1770s and 1780s.

In 1775, the English writer Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) wrote to his stepdaughter Lucy Porter: “This week I came home from Paris. I have brought you a little box which I thought is pretty; but I know not whether it is properly a snuff-box, or a box for some other use,” suggesting that the owner could use such small boxes for any purpose.

Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum.