This snuffbox illustrates the far-reaching impact of the Steinkabinett-Tabatières that Christian Gottlieb Stiehl and Johann Christian Neuber created in Dresden in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the side of the box sixteen different hardstone specimens are inlaid in Zellenmosaik. On the inside rim of the lid, numbers are engraved which would have corresponded with a catalogue that originally accompanied the box. The decoration of the lid and base consists of four panels of banded agate ingeniously cut so as to resemble tree rings when placed together. The whole is assembled on a core of mottled beige quartz.
Johann Georg Aigner, born between 1761 and 1765, became a master goldsmith in 1789 and remained active until about 1820. He appears to have specialised in hardstone specimen boxes. Other examples include an oval box, the lid and base inset with lapis lazuli panels, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and a circular box made in 1793, the same year as the present work, the side of which is similarly set with sixteen hardstone specimens, sold at auction in New York in 2014.

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