Adrien-Jean-Maximilien Vachette is one of the best known and most prolific Parisian goldsmiths active at the end of the 18th century. Vachette was trained in Paris, possibly by the celebrated court goldsmith Pierre-Francois Drais who sponsored him when he became master in 1779.

Vachette produced many interesting and unusual boxes, now scattered among public and private collects ions, such as the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Gilbert collects ion. The latter owns a boîte-à-miniatures by Vachette, also with chased cagework mounts encompassing grisailles by De Gault, representing the Triumph of Bacchus and the drunkenness of Silenus (accession no 366-2008). Jacques-Joseph de Gault (1738–after 1812) worked as a painter at Sèvres for two years from 1760 and was received into the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1774, where he exhibited until 1787. He was the first artist to specialise in miniatures simulating cameos.

Thirteen boxes with his signed miniatures survive in the Louvre alone (see for example a gold box, dated 1784/5 in the Lenoir Bequest, in Serge Grandjean, Les tabatières du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1981, no. 207). Sets of miniatures and enamels taken from cameos and engraved gems were evidently much in vogue during the last third of the 18th century and were used to decorate boxes by several prominent goldsmiths, including Pierre-François Drais and Charles Ouizille.