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.



Circular gold boxes without hinges are generally described as bonbonnières, a term which came into use circa 1770. They contained confectionery in the form of a type of pastille called dragée.



Boxes of this style were produced by many Parisian goldsmiths in the 1780s. Using a range of colored gold and decorated with concentric engine-turning scattered with applied or engraved dots and rosettes, this box is very similar to 48.187.476a, b, although considerably smaller. Jean Baptiste Fay’s series of designs Cahier de Bijouteries dans le goût modern, published between 1780-1790, which may well have provided the inspiration for this box, specifically states that the designs could be used for cane-handles, seals, and pieces of jewelry as well as boxes.



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.