In the ingenious use of honey-coloured banded agate, arranged to suggest the markings of the wings of a butterfly, this box may be compared with another created in the Drais workshop two years earlier on which mushroom-coloured banded agate was employed to similar effect. While the present butterfly is inset into a hardstone reserve, the wings of the butterfly in the earlier version fill the whole lid. A study for the latter box is included in the album of designs from the workshop of Jean Ducrollay and his successors. It is inscribed “Boite a Mr / Dogny”, indicating that the box was made for Alexandre Marc René Estienne d’Augny (1738–1798), fermier général and a geologist of international renown. Given d’Augny’s interests it is not surprising that all of the fourteen boxes included in the sale of his collection, which took place in 1798, were set with hardstones including sardonyx and agate arborisé. It is possible that both these butterfly boxes by Drais were inspired by an earlier example made by his cousin, Jean Ducrollay, where pairs of grey agate butterflies flutter in rock crystal fields

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