A four-colour gold and enamel snuff box, Jean George, Paris, 1761/2

Jean George(s) was one of the most celebrated and successful of Parisian gold box makers and one of the few who both made and retailed their own objects (as witnessed by his name inscribed – in various hands – on the bezel of a number of the boxes including the present example). He became master by paying 6,000 livres following a special edict of the King (2 September 1747) admitting one extra master per year by payment to raise money for the poor of the Guild, and entered a mark on 24th January 1752. By 1762 he was classed as le 7me de la corporation pour l’importance des affaires, paying the same amount of tax that year as the royal goldsmith, François-Thomas Germain. George's name appears as a supplier of gold boxes both in the Menus Plaisirs du Roi and in the Présents du Roi and features regularly in the Affiches de Paris offering rewards for lost or stolen boxes.

Following his death in 1765, his widow appears to have sold a considerable amount of his stock including a 'quantité de bijoux nouveaux et du dernier goût, de la fabrique du dit Sr Georges, comme tabatières, étuis, flacons, boetes à mouches, bonbonnières, navettes, étuis de pièces, montres d’homme et de femme, chaînes, cachets, tant en or que garnis d’or et émaux'. The sales presumably provided her with the means to enter into partnership with her late husband’s sole pupil, Pierre-Mathis de Beaulieu, whom, in time-honoured fashion, she was later to marry.

Another gold box by Jean George of the same date as the present lot, also decorated with en grisaille enamels of putti, signed by Mlle Duplessis, can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (fig. 1, object no 17.190.1125).