Battersea Snuff Boxes and Tobacco Boxes

Beautiful figural hinged sterling silver snuff pill box; lid features a female in profile with flowing hair; interior marked: 925. A perfect heirloom gi...

A very handsome George III tea caddy, made from Mahogany and beautifully inlaid with panels and highly decorative foliate marquetry to the front and top. The top has a handsome cast ...

An excellent quality late 18th or early 19th century Battersea enamel snuff or patch box. The pink enamel background with white enamel lattice and a raised gold around the hand paint...

Bonbonnie`re, or candy box, in intricately patterned gold and translucent, ruby-red enamel. Thin bands of gold are inlaid in the enamel. A painted enamel medallion decorates the lid ...

A charming mottled-blue glazed Crown Staffordshire porcelain box in the chinoiserie style England, circa 1900–1920. Why we like it The deep, mottled ‘powder blue’ colour of this...

The box of rectangular shape with faceted corners topped with an enamel scene featuring three horses grazing by the watering trough amongst a sunburst enamel background. The interior...

Rounded square pill box in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with white fired enamel, above and below, with hand painted horse head. Dimensions cm. 5.2 x 5.2 x 2.3. Weight gr. 117. Designed by Franco Salimbeni in 1966 on the inspiration of previous artefacts made in the English Art Nouveau style of the early 1900s and manufactured in the Salimbeni company headquarters in Florence in numerous specimens also with different subjects, with completely manual execution by artisan artists with a slab of high thickness suitable for supporting numerous enamelled firings at around 800°C. Miniature is a very ancient technique which consists of painting works in small proportions. It was born for the decoration of the first letter of the paragraph of the books. Over the years, however, this technique is refined and enriched, then moving on to precious personal items. Hand-painted miniatures can be done with multiple different techniques. The most important that we use on our articles are of three kinds: 1) Fire enamel. 2) Water tempera on an ivory plate. 3) Painted on mother-of-pearl. Fire enameled miniatures: On a first layer of enamel generally white or very clear or even transparent suitably liquefied at a temperature of about 750 ° C, the chosen subject is painted using miniature colors which are as many colored crystals, ground and reduced to a very fine, almost impalpable powder washed and purified in distilled water with the addition of small quantities of deoxidizing acids which, diluted with essential oils (usually essential oil of solder), can be mixed to form a palette of colors. With very fine sable hair brushes you draw the subject starting from the perimeter and then gradually adding various layers of color. It is necessary to carry out various firings very often so that the colors harden and are not absorbed by the underlying glaze as, during the subsequent firings at 750 ° C, during liquefaction, it would spread irremediably. Hence the need to form the painting a little at a time, cooking it numerous times. Therefore it is necessary to proceed with numerous retouching, often overlapping different colors that only the painter's experience knows. A beautiful miniature needs from 20 to over 50 firings and is finished when the painter deems he does not have to further intervene. Some colors must have darker tones than others because then, by superimposing the transparent enamel placed at the end of the miniature, they fade. This transparent layer, called “fondant” in jargon, must be smoothed and polished like all other translucent enamel colors. The miniatures with water tempera colors are painted on real...

Hand-thrown modern ceramic lidded bonbonniére jar by Danish artist Ulla Sonne on the Danish island of Funen in the 2010s. Shiny black glaze with unglazed edges and base. Peach colore...

Battersea Enamels Selected and Described with a Signed Introduction By Egan Mew. Published by The Medici Society, London, 1926. Rare Signed 1st Ed hardc...

An antique English George III tea caddy offers rosewood construction in casket form with gadroon elements and raised on bun feet, c1820 Measures - 8"h x 13.5"d x 7.5"d

Old Chinese Opium Box in Cloisonné Enamel, decorated with Vases and Flowers. French Private Collection

A fine and impressive antique Georgian English sterling silver vinaigrette in the form of a purse, an addition to our silver boxes collection This antique Georgian silver vinaigrette...