Tiffany Sterling Silver HInged "Soap Box"

Victorian Period, sterling silver, heart-form trinkets box having a hinged lid and gilded interior, Birmingham, England, year-hallmarked for 1895, James Aitchison - maker (by Appoint...

Victorian, sterling silver heart-form trinkets box with hinged lid and gilt interior, Birmingham, England, year-hallmarked for 1897, H. Matthews - Maker. Lid is designed with a Joshu...

Victorian Period, sterling silver-mounted (unmarked, but tested) Cowrie shell snuff box with hinged lid, England, Ca. 1840's. Measures 3 inches long x 2 inches deep x almost 2 inches high. Sterling silver mount is engraved Mrs. Margaret Burke...

Unusual, Art Deco Period, sterling silver, two-compartment table box on bun feet and having two hinged lids and a handle, The Watrous Division of The International Silver Co., Meride...

An elegant, sterling silver (935 grams), hinged box with bamboo pattern.

Midcentury Modern sterling silver box. Made by Tiffany & Co. in New York. Rectangular with straight sides. Cover has flat top and molded rim. Box interior cedar-lined and partitioned...

Large rectangular table box in malachite with hinged frame in 925/1000 sterling Silver gold plated. The malachite is a large single whole slab on the lid and the stone design becomes...

Oval rounded "soap" shaped snuff box in 925/1000 sterling silver with fired enamels above and below and hand-painted miniature of a horse's head, English "Art Nouveau" style, early 1900s. Measurements cm. 4.7 x 6.7 x 2. Weight gr. 96. Designed by Franco Salimbeni in 1980 and manufactured in Florence 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 high heat 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...