Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), court jeweller in Dresden, specialised in creating objects of vertu which combined locally-mined hardstones with delicate work in gold. Neuber was apprenticed to Johann Friedrich Trechaon, a goldsmith of Swedish origin, in 1752 at the age of 17. In 1762 he became master goldsmith and burger of Dresden, succeeding Heinrich Taddel as director of the Grünes Gewölbe, and before 1775 he also was appointed Court Jeweller. It was from Taddel, his father-in-law and mentor, that Neuber acquired his knowledge of hardstones and how to work them. Although commissioned to produce the occasional large-scale work such as a table inlaid with 128 hardstones given by the Elector of Saxony to the baron de Breteuil in 1780 to celebrate the peace of Teschen (now in the Louvre, Paris), Neuber specialised in a wide range of small-scale objects, including snuff boxes, carnets de bal, cane handles, watch cases, chatelaines, and jewellery such as bracelets and rings. His distinctive style was popular both at court and with the many visitors who came to Dresden as it rebuilt itself after the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). The great majority of precious objects from the Neuber workshops, such as the present box, are unsigned and unmarked, but are recognisable from the incomparable art seen in both choosing the stones and in their application.

The present box has never before been seen by the public in colour. It was illustrated in black and white by the art historian and Neuber biographer Walter Holzhausen in his 1935 monograph on Johann Christian Neuber celebrating the goldsmith's anniversary the following year (Walter Holzhausen, Johann Christian Neuber, ein sächsischer Meister des 18. Jahrhunderts, Dresden, 1935). Evidently, the black and white illustration (fig. 3) which has since been used in the literature on the subject could not do justice to this bright and colourful hardstone specimen snuff box.

As Holzhausen recorded, this box belongs to the group of Steinkabinettstabatieren, Neuber’s speciality. These boxes could be oval, circular or octagonal and were inlaid with somet.mes s as many as 140 different Saxon polished hardstone specimens, with the aim of displaying nature's manifold mineral offerings at the same t.mes as providing an outlet for the natural products of cash-poor Saxony. The present box contains 56 numbered specimens held smoothly en cloison within narrow gold cagework. The small numbers engraved in the gold mount above each hardstone would have allowed the owner of such a box to look up the exact name and place of origin of each specimen in an accompanying explanatory booklet, only a few of which survive today.

Writing in 2012, Alexis Kugel includes the present box in the last, more neoclassical, group of gold boxes by Neuber, made with specimens arranged in straight rays of hardstone between 1785 and the end of his career in 1794/95 (Alexis Kugel, Gold, Jasper and Carnelian, Johann Christian Neuber at the Saxon Court, London, 2012, p. 196). Because of its date, of all the documented gold-mounted hardstone Steinkabinette by Neuber, the present example is among the most unusual. It is bright and airy and the semi-translucent hardstone panels are relatively big, allowing them to display different structures or inclusions within the stone and catch the light through like a stained glass window. The gold borders have been minimised so that it is the semi-translucent panels - chosen for their colours which partially pick up the different shades of honey, opalescent pale pink or caramel in the burgau and shell of the central medallion - which attract the attention. In this way, the boxes from Neuber's last period differ from those made around 1775/80, in which the Hofsteinschneider focused more on the technique of arranging much smaller hardstone inlays to form complex patterns or imagery (Kugel, nos. 141 or 148).

The central plaque on the present lot is also characteristic of another category in Neuber's oeuvre - gold boxes applied with hardstone or shell cameos either carved locally or more often imported from Italy. For example, the hardstone and glass cameo of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor on an oval presentation box, was evidently produced in Neuber's own workshops (Sotheby's London, 10 December 2020, lot 15; Kugel, no. 72) whereas a signed Neuber box in the British Museum is set with a signed onyx cameo of Achilles by the Roman carver Nicolo Morelli (BM 1906, 1019.1). It is possible that the oval panel on the lid of the present box was imported from Italy. The ground material appears to be of lavastone and the style of the applied ornament can be compared to that on a box in the Gilbert collects ion, the lid decorated with a swan swimming in a pool below a rocky hillside, the panel signed: '[S] Morelli F. in Roma via della Scrofa N.8'.

Although Roman cameos and micromosaics (also popular with Neuber) were widely available in Europe in the later 18th century (Charles Truman, The Gilbert collects ion of gold boxes, Vol. I, Los Angeles, 1991, cat. no. 81, pp. 239), is entirely possible that the central medallion on the present box originates in Dresden, which since the early 18th century had also been known for figures and Galanteriewaren (precious yet functional objects) made from grotesque pearls or mother of pearl combined with gold or silver, as works by Johann Melchior Dinglinger (1664 –1731) and his contemporaries attest (see Dirk Syndram / Ulrike Weinhold, exhibition catalogue, “…und ein Leib von Perl”, die Sammlung der barocken Perlfiguren im Grünen Gewölbe, Dresden, 2000). The fashion for mounting panels applied with differently-coloured carved mother of pearl, shell or burgau into gold boxes seems, however, first to have appeared in Paris in the 1740s. The goldsmiths often used burgau which comes from a sea snail with a purplish shell lining known by the scientific name of turbo marmoreus, and which also became popular in Europe for other objects of vertu such as fans, buttons and cane handles as it can be found in a variety of shades. A German gold box, dated circa 1745, inset with carved burgau flowers and leaves, formerly in the collects ion of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, shows that the craft.mes n in mid-18th century Dresden and Berlin picked up this Parisian fashion rather quickly (Kenneth Snowman, Eighteenth Century snuff boxes of Europe, London, 1966, p. 332, pl. 693). Indeed, in conversation, Charles Truman put forward the theory that the mother of pearl encrusted panels on Paris boxes may have been imported from Germany and then mounted in France. Indeed there would have been no dearth of German artists even at this date to carve this charming medallion (see the late 18th century chinoiserie pearl, burgau and hardstone appliqué panels on the lid of another box in the Gilbert collects ion, Truman, op. cit, vol. II, 1999, no. 22, p. 43).

Not only can the present box by the Dresden court jeweller be understood as a successful product of Saxon mercantilism in the late 18^th century, but it must also be admired as a combination of the contemporary scientific interest in mineralogy and geology with craftmanship and beauty, or as Holzhausen put it, ‘in this fashionanble bijou, luxury, taste and science are combined, making it truly interesting for every wealthy connoisseur’ (Holzhausen, op. cit, pp. 9-10).