Despite the lack of a legible maker’s mark, the attribution to Nicolas Bouillerot (active 1720 1754) is based on its similarity to several other gold-mounted hardstone boxes by Bouillerot.). Nicolas Bouillerot was among the first Paris goldsmiths to mount hardstones and his “porthole” style is quite distinctive. Furthermore, the present box is also a very early example of the growing interest in arborised agates in eighteenth-century France. The dendritic hardstones were not only cherished as scientific examples of mineral specimens, such as those displayed in cabinets of curiosities like that of the Abbé de Fleury (sold in 1756), but were also perceived as a natural way of creating images, and so suitable slices of stone would be chosen for their ability to serve as pictures with nature imitating art.

Henry Nocq was able to discover more information than usual about the life and work of Bouillerot, who was the first of a long line of Paris goldsmiths. Bouillerot became master on 30 January 1720, sponsored by Pierre Lucas Colas, but he was previously recorded in December 1719 by the Goldsmiths’ Guild’s inspectors when they paid a surprise visit to the house of the widow Neuve on the pont au Change. Pierre Neuve had died in 1705, but his widow’s shop is listed in 1713 and 1715. When the inspectors arrived in 1719, they found only Angélique Bivelat, Bouillerot’s wife, on the premises. Bouillerot is described as a journeyman, shortly to become master and succeed to the widow Neuve’s business. It is further noted that there were no account books and little stock, but what was present was all in order.

Twenty years later, in July 1740, Bouillerot was not so lucky when he and his journeyman François Lacarrière were arrested and imprisoned in the Conciergerie for having made snuffbox mounts of inferior standard. Lacarrière was condemned to remain a journeyman (but not with Bouillerot) and never become master, while Bouillerot was fined 100 livres, suspended for three months, and his stock confiscated. According to Nocq this was a comparatively mild sentence, indicating that the guild did not consider the goldsmith to be very guilty, but wished to register its opposition to “dangerous innovations”.

Bouillerot died in 1754 at the age of seventy leaving two sons, Pierre and François Nicolas, both also silversmiths. That he specialised in mounting boxes is confirmed not only by his crime and the existence of a small number of elegant hardstone boxes struck with his mark, but also by a shell shaped agate-onyx box, again Paris, 1726–1732, with his signature: Bouillerot A Paris on the front rim, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and formerly in the Palace Collections of Egypt.

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