Tortoise snuffbox, France, probably Paris, ca 1780-1800. Carapace of a geometric tortoise, Gold, in part enamelled, rose gold, inset stones. Height 4.5 cm, width 10 cm, depth 6 cm © Kunstkammer Georg Laue

Provenance: Monaco, private collection

This South African tent tortoise carapace with its exquisitely worked mount of enamelled gold inset with stones presents like a living tortoise that is about to draw its head back into its shell. Turning the creature over reveals the plastron, which is also mounted in gold and, is fitted with hinges to form a lid. At this stage it becomes clear that this precious small tortoise is a snuffbox made in the eighteenth century when snuffboxes were at the height of their popularity in court circles. Quite a few eighteenth-century snuffboxes made by incorporating tortoise carapaces have survived to be held by public museums. However, boxes of this kind with the body of the tortoise represented three-dimensionally in precious metal are rare.

What is also remarkable about the tortoise snuffbox discussed here is the selection of exquisite materials used to mount the carapace and plastron and not least the elaborate way in which the goldsmith worked them. The mount is made of gold rather than silver-gilt; the tortoise’s head, its feet and its tail are polychromed in translucent enamel colours; the eyes are set with garnets and the claws with diamonds. Varicoloured gold was used for the lid, in part matt and engraved with delicate vegetal decoration. The use of traditionally coloured gold alternately with rose gold, which is produced by adding more copper to the alloy, makes for particular elegance.

The use of varicoloured gold in combination with enamelled gold and inset stones is characteristic of French goldsmiths’ work from the mid-eighteenth century. The enormous demand among members of the French aristocracy and upper classes for sophisticated luxury goods benefited Paris goldsmiths, who targeted a rich clientele with small objets d’art and accessories of a representative character emphasised by the use of precious materials worked with consummate craftsmanship. That the present tortoise snuffbox was probably made around 1780 and not earlier is shown by the reticent, delicate decoration engraved on the underside. These motifs, although vegetal, are far from the Rococo decoration that stylistically defined work by Paris goldsmiths until 1760. On the contrary, these motifs reveal affinities with the astringently elegant formal idiom of the neoclassicism that would prevail toward the end of the eighteenth century.