Casket “à la fanfare”. A wooden rectangular casket covered with red goatskin gilt, possibly by the Ève bindery and possibly for Marie de Médicis, Paris, early seventeenth century

CASKET "A LA FANFARE". A wooden rectangular casket covered with red goatskin, richly gold tooled à la fanfare, possibly by the Ève bindery and possibly for Marie de Médicis, Paris, early seventeenth century

250 by 37.8 by 16 cm

The sides and lid decorated in gilt à la fanfare, with interlacing strapwork forming geometric compartments, curved and spiralling fillets bearing solid and azured leafy tools and stylised flower and bud tool, oak and laurel leafy branches, other flowers, buds, and dots, two six-point stars on lid containing double “M” monogram, mounted with carrying handle, pierced corner clasps, two securing hooks, pierced lockplate, the interior compartment (22 by 9 by 6.8 cm) with lid similarly decorated, interior lined with green silk, with key, another possible compartment not examined

The attribution of the double “M” monogram on this casket to Marie de Médicis (1573-1642), Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of Henry IV, first appears in Amédée Boinet’s catalogue of the library of G. Whitney Hoff. The Ève Bindery was a Parisian binding atelier established by Nicolas Ève (d. c. 1582), royal binder to Henri III, responsible for several intricate fanfare bindings. After Nicolas’ death, his son Clovis (1565–1634) continued this work, becoming royal binder to Henri IV and binding some books for his wife, Marie de Médicis.

Provenance: Possibly Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), Queen of France, ?monogram on lid; Librairie Gumuchian, Catalogue XII (1929), no. 130, plates 49 & 50 — Grace Whitney-Hoff (1862-1938), see Amédée Boinet, Bibliothèque de Madame G. Whitney Hoff (Paris 1933), vol. 1, no. 121, plates 47 & 4