Snuffbox with a Scene of Venus and Cupid

Marking: Marks:(1)
Inside the front wall:
1. Maker’s mark of Joseph-Étienne Blerzy, a crowned fleurde-lis, two grains de remède, jeb, device a level(2)
2. Foliate crossed L’s. The charge mark for gold and mediumsize silver, Paris, 1780 – 82(3)
3. A crowned italic R, the warden’s mark for gold and small silver, Paris, 1780 – 81(4)
Inside the cover and the base:
Marks 1, 2, and:
4. A crowned italic S, the warden’s mark for gold and small silver, Paris, 1781 – 82(5)

On the right bezel:
5. A ewer, the discharge mark for work intended for export, Paris, 1780 – 92(6)
The number G.R. 414 is painted in black inside the cover.(7)

NOTES:
1. Certain marks have been interpreted by Charles Truman.
2. Nocq, Henry. Le poinçon de Paris: Répertoire des maîtresorfèvres de la juridiction de Paris depuis le Moyen-Âge jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. 5 vols. Paris, 1926 – 31, vol. 1, pp. 137 – 38.
3. Bimbenet-Privat, Michèle, and Gabriel de Fontaines. La datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne sous l’Ancien Régime: Poinçons de jurande et poinçons de la Marque, 1507 – 1792. Paris, 1995, no. 504.
4. Ibid., no. 517.
5. Ibid., no. 418.
6. Ibid., nos. 512, 529, 558.
7. As Charles Truman has noted, the inventory number G.R. 414 is the identifying number painted on this piece when it was confiscated by the Nazis from Baron Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild of Frankfurt. The property was returned to his family by the city of Frankfurt in 1949 and subsequently sold by Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York, in 1950.

Baron Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1879-1941), Frankfurt-am-Main.