20th Century Sterling Silver Pill Box Decorated with Jockey on Horseback

French Bronze Sculpture of Youth Wrangling a Horse by Guillaume Coustou (1677-1746). Best known for his monumental statues of horses, Coustou was the royal sculptor for Louis XIV an...

19th Century Trompe L'oeil Country House Painted Oak Box This adorable box is an original 19th century box that was recently painted in the 21st century by an English artist in the ...

Late 19th Century Large Painted Folk Art Hobbyhorse with Sea Glass Eyes. America, 1880-1900. Measures: 26.5" H, 33" W, 11" D

20th century Bruno Zach bronze sculpture on Onyx Tray Marked "Zach" - Bruno Zach was an Austrian art deco sculptor in the 1920s Circa 1920s Measur...

English silver horse racing snuff box, Birmingham 1829 A silver snuff box with a scene from horse racing on top of the hinged lidded box. On the sides a guilocche pattern and inside...

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...

19th Century Russian silver and nickel plated tobacco box "sultan on horseback" Measures: Height: 1.5 centimeters Length: 10.5 centimeters Depth: 7 centimeters

Enamelled German cigarette case. Great historical piece, created in Germany during the turn of the century, back in the 1905. This beautiful cigarette box has been carefully craft...