Bonbon Box with Coaching Scene

The luxury French jewelry firm, Boucheron designed this bejeweled box in the style of an 18th-century snuffbox. In all likelihood, nobody ever used this box for taking snuff; instead, a collector would have displayed and treasured it as a tour de force in technique and style. On the lid, a hunter, accompanied by his two dashing hounds, watches an elegant carriage pulled by four graceful horses. Boucheron’s goldsmiths encrusted the figures with diamonds and mounted them on a rock crystal background. Beneath the crystal, lie a painted gold base with multiple shallow reliefs. This combination of layered materials imparts a distinctive blue, moonlight quality to the background and accentuates the diamonds’ brilliance. Frederic Boucheron founded the House of Boucheron in 1858 and opened his first store in Paris’s Palais-Royal. He rose to fame by winning a gold medal during the Exposition Universelle, the 1867 world’s fair held in Paris.

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Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1927, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.