The marks on this box provide no obvious clue as to where it was made and the maker’s mark is apparently unrecorded. It is just conceivable, however, that the indication of gold quality – an incuse-stamped ‘20 K’ – may offer a lead about the place of manufacture. The font used is not dissimilar to that on another box in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, which is stamped ‘K 20’. This box, marked for another elusive maker, AP, is further struck on the rim with a bird’s head, the mark used in Hanau to indicate 19 carat gold. In terms of design both show an awareness of the style of snuffbox produced by Parisian goldsmiths just a few years earlier: en plein-painted vignettes, their irregular outlines defined by rocaille scrolls. The present box incorporates a pleasing visual conceit: the small areas in between the framing scrollwork on the side are painted with sky and landscape details so as to suggest the vignettes are part of one continuous scene

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