When this hardstone box was last sold at auction in 1911 (fig. 2), it achieved a hammer price of 1450,00 Reichsmark, which at the t.mes was the equivalent of one and a third average annual salaries. The fact that it was sold for considerably more than the 18^th century Paris gold and enamel boxes in the same sale, speaks for the quality and rarity of this interesting box itself, although it is now sadly missing some of the encrusted fruit that were still present when sold more than 100 years ago (see fig. 2). Since the turn of the 19th century, gold-mounted hardstone snuff boxes of 18th century Dresden or Berlin origin were very popular among collects ors of Galanteriewaren and the decorative arts more generally, not least due to the revived enthusiasm for the work of the Dresden court jeweller Johann Christian Neuber in the late 19^th century. Although hardstone boxes such as the present lot have traditionally often been believed to be of Dresden origin, the similarity of the carved grapes, peaches and the initially present persimmon (see fig. 2) to the appliqué box in the Gilbert collects ion, attributed to Berlin, might in fact rather suggest a Berlin workshop as a possibility (Charles Truman, The Gilbert collects ion of Gold Boxes, vol. I, Los Angeles, 1991, p. 202, no. 70). Truman mentioned the famous Frederick the Great snuff box in the Louvre, applied with finely carved fruit and flowers, as a comparative reference to the Gilbert collects ion box.

It is indeed interesting that the grapes, the cherries and especially the small white flowers, possibly daisies, which appear on the Frederick the Great box, can also be found on the present lot, thus suggesting a geographical and stylistic closeness to Berlin with its famous Huguenot workmen who the king used to summon to Sanssouci to commission some of the most iconic and splendorous gold boxes ever created. Apart from the recorded goldsmiths, lapidaries and box makers who worked for the Prussian court, another very skilled, yet quite enigmatic goldsmith comes to mind, who has been associated especially with raised hardstone carving of fruit, flowers and insects in late 18^th century Germany – Hoffman. So far, only two signed gold-mounted hardstone boxes, set with most intricately carved and carefully positioned appliqué insects and flowers, are known. One belongs to the Gilbert collects ion (Truman, op. cit., cat. no. 66), signed F. L. Hoffmann F.; the other is signed Hoffmann F. It was sold at Replica Shoes ’s London, 10 December 2020, lot 18, and is now part of a private collects ion.