Giorgio Salimbeni Jewelry Boxes

Domed oval pillbox in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with translucent fired enamels on guillochè, top and bottom, with fine hand-engravings. Viennese Art Nouveau style second h...

Pill Box Silver is in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated 24carats. Pill Box Silver has light blue translucent fired enamels on guilloché. Pill Box Silver has a sliding lid and hole...

Pill Box Silver is in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated 24carats. Pill Box Silver is Round with translucent fired enamels on guilloché. Pill Box Silver has a hand-painted miniatur...

Pill Box Silver Sterling Enamel Miniature Sailing Ship is in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated 24 carats. Pill Box Silver is with translucent fired enamels on guilloché. Pill Box ...

Powder case for handbag in 925/1000 sterling silver with black and red fired enamel. Opening with spring button. Ground mirror and retina inside. Measure cm. 7.3 x 7.3 x 1.5. Weight gr.250. Created in the Art Deco style for Cartier USA in the 1980s, inspired by designs by Louis Cartier from the early 1900s. Manufactured in Florence in the Salimbeni company headquarters with completely manual execution by artisan artists with thick slab and large reinforcements suitable for withstanding numerous high-fire enamelled firings at about 750°<800° C. About cooperation Salimbeni and Cartier. Our first meetings with the Cartier USA Company took place through the Giorgini Company, the first "Buying Office" set up in Florence immediately after the Second World War, which had the purpose of bringing together Florentine, and also Italian, producers with American buyers, who especially appreciated the artistic objects still manufactured by artisans who still took inspiration from the Italian Renaissance, using techniques handed down from generation to generation. Mrs. Gina Pestelli, wife of a Florentine retail jeweller, was in charge of contacts with Cartier USA, above all an employee, while her daughter, also for Giorgini, took care of the fashion that in those years was affirmed in Florence with the events of "Pitti ". With their help, we began to supply frames and boxes in sterling silver gold plated with malachite and other semi-precious stones. At the same time, the official buyer of Cartier, Mr. William Smith, began to appreciate and commission the first objects with fired enamels, a process of which we have always been specialists. In 1975 we began exhibiting at the prestigious New York Jewellery Association Show, which we participated in both the February and July editions, for a good 26 years until 2001. In New York in those years the "Art deco style" was still very much appreciated, still mindful of the beautiful early 20th century architecture of the great buildings such as the "Crysler" or the "Empire State". We then began to produce frames, boxes, evening bags, "objets de vertu" and other objects in "art deco style" which were very popular with Mr. Smith who gave us some photocopies of Louis Francois Cartier drawings to reproduce them. Thus, numerous cigarette cases, powder compacts, evening bags, frames and table boxes were created exclusively for Cartier USA which, at the time, had the prestigious "Silver Department" on the first floor of the Cartier store on Fifth Avenue. An evening bag, with matching cigarette case and powder compact, were redone on the design created for a gift given to Mary Pickford at the time. In a 1986 Cartier...

Pill Box oval with floral miniature Art Nouveau style Sterling Silver Salimbeni in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with hand-painted fire-enamel...

Square pill box with oval section in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with two-tone translucent fired enamels with guillochè stripes and hand-engraved motifs on all sides. George...

Oval pillbox in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with hand painted fine monochrome fire enamelled miniature depicting a landscape in Art Nouveau style. Dimensions cm. 4.5 x 5.5 x 1.4. Weight gr. 70. Designed by Giorgio Salimbeni in 1977 and manufactured in Florence in some specimens with various subjects and different colors, in the headquarters of the Salimbeni company with completely manual execution by artisan artists with thick slab and large reinforcements suitable for withstanding numerous enamelled firings at about 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 ivory...