SUISSE ou HANAU, vers 1780-1789
Oval yellow gold (750) snuffbox decorated on all sides with translucent midnight-blue enamel on a checkerboard background of striated diamonds, enhanced by friezes of gilded leaves, four pilasters (in profile) adorned with gilded altars of Love on a midnight-blue background chased with chevrons, opaque black for the ribbons adorned with oak leaves and opaque white for the fillets.
The hinged lid features an oval miniature depicting a bust of a woman in a blue dress, bordered by a line of white half-pearls in grain setting, a translucent blue enameled ribbon on a background of oves and a white enameled fillet.
This unsigned miniature was probably applied when the box was resold in France.
Traces of the goldsmith's hallmark on the reverse of the lid.
Leaf engraved with "Du petit Dunkerque", the name of Charles-Raymond GRANCHEZ's store in Paris.
Repunched in FRANCE at E.T., used between 1864 and 1893 for foreign manufacture.
Gross weight: 90.9 g. - 26 x 75.5 x 53 mm.
A few scratches; minor bumps to the interior; cracks, chips and minor flaws to the enamels; old restorations, notably to a profile pilaster, reconstituted.
The merchant-mercier Charles-Raymond GRANCHEZ (or GRANCHER / ? -1813), originally from the Nord region of France, ran a store under the name "Au petit Dunkerque" on quai Conti in Paris between 1767 and 1789, then rue de Richelieu between 1789 and 1813.
Jeweler to Queen Marie-Antoinette, he also sold objets de vertu, crockery, furniture and imported goods, notably from England...
The boxes he sold bear the handwritten inscription engraved on the rabbet: "Au petit Dunkerque" or "Du petit Dunkerque".
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