A German Gold And Micro-Mosaic Large Snuff Box, The Box Probably Hanau, The Mosaic Vatican Workshops, Circa 1820

shallow rectangular with cut corners, the cover with a circular micro-mosaic of the Temple of Concordia Augusta, with two figures in the foreground, the cover chased with scrolling foliage on sablé ground repeated on the base centered by a bouquet, the sides engine-turned, the angles chased and bright-cut with urns, marked inside base and cover with crossed SS and sun-bursts and stamped on the rim of the cover 6872

length 3 7/8 in.

10 cm

Catalogue note
Another micro-mosaic of this subject appears on an ivory bonbonnière illustrated in Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel, Micromosaics, 2016, no. 139 p.178. Gabriel notes of the temple of Concordia, goddess of tranquility and peace “the patrician dictator Camillus (446-365 BC) pledged to build the temple in 367 BC as a symbol of harmony between the plebeians and the patricians though it was not constructed till two hundred years later against the base of the Capitoline Hill". Clement XI (r.1700-1721) destroyed the north side to build a staircase from the Capitoline Hill to the Forum.

The identity of the box maker is discussed by Julia Clarke in Enamels of the World 1700-2000, The Khalili Collections, pp. 301-303, where she links these marks with the maker using initials FJ- with laurel, based on both makers sharing a continuous numbering system, the earliest being a three-figure number, the latest in the 6000s. She illustrates 20 boxes in their stamped number order, variously stamped with crossed SS and/or FJ in fig. 9.6. Their bases are illustrated in fig. 9-7, all on p. 302.

Provenance
Property Of A Private Collector