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. Luxurious boxes were also made elsewhere in France as is illustrated by this lavishly decorated box in three colors of gold and monogrammed JLB (?), which was made in Limoges during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.



Shallow boxes of this elongated form are generally considered to have held toothpicks. Sometimes, however, they are referred to as patch boxes: both types might have included a mirror. Although this box is not fitted with a mirror, the highly polished gold inside the lid must have provided sufficient reflection to enable the user to see what he or she was doing.



Made far from the fashionable center of Paris, it is likely that the maker was inspired by designs such as those found in Jean Baptiste Fay’s Cahiers de Bijouterie dans le goût modern, of circa 1780–90.



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.