The first stamped numeral is difficult to interpret – it could be either or 7. It is slightly apart from the other two digits, clearly legible and in a different font. The lid is set with an oval enamel plaque – continuing a fashion that had emerged in Paris in the mid-1770s. In this instance the en grisaille plaque may be of French origin. An ‘FJ’ box numbered 846 in the Khalili Collection is similarly inset with a plaque; however, shortly after these were made there was a move to paint the vignettes en plein, an approach to enamelled decoration that was unchanged for the remaining years of the workshop’s production. The pearl-set border, another form of decoration that had its origins in Paris a decade earlier, was favoured by the FJ workshop for a number of years.

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