Mother of Pearl Flowers and Dragonfly on Asian Black Lacquer Snuff Box

This special and important Swiss gold music box is chased and engraved with a set of musical instruments surrounded by elaborate swirls of ornate foliage. Embossed with a delightful braided gold design, the two-compartment box features an exquisite oval agate key, which opens a recessed lock in the base of the box. Such a box would have been a prized possession and would have been able to fit neatly into a gentleman’s waistcoat pocket. Ingenious miniature portable devices, musical snuff boxes...

Wonderful carved German or Austrian snuff box hunting motive and silver mounting. Carved to fit "hand in glove." Provenance: Exhibited at the Dome M...

This oval gold snuff box is inscribed with a crest of ‘a stag trippant’ within mantling of upright ostrich plumes tied with a bow, all below a ducal coronet and above a cypher of the entwined initials ‘B.A.B.’ for Anne of Buccleuch. English, circa 1670. Provenance: Anne, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch (1651-1732) was a wealthy Scottish peeress. After her father died when she was a few months old, and her sisters by the time she was 10, she inherited the family’s titles. She was married, at 12 years old, to James, 1st Duke of Monmouth, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, then 14. Following the king’s death in February 1685, James spearheaded an anti-Catholic revolt to depose the new king, James II, and claim the throne from his uncle. The brief Monmouth Rebellion ended in defeat and James, by then Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, was executed for treason. The Duchess had six children by Monmouth, and a further three by her second husband, Charles, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, whom she married in 1688. She died in 1732 and was succeeded by her grandson, Francis, Earl of Dalkeith. The style of chasing used on this box is very reminiscent of a signed piece in the Gilbert...

An exceptional, fine and impressive antique Austrian silver table snuff box; an addition to our ornamental silverware collection. This excepti...