Perhaps in response to a Russian taste for richness of effect, Séguin has set the border with turquoise gemstones rather than using turquoise enamel beading, such as Blerzy employed for the border of the previous box. The contrasts of surface and colour of this jewelled border, combined with the paillon-edged ultramarine enamelled ground and the double band of diamonds framing the central plaque, all contribute to the eye-catching exuberance of the work. Surviving examples of Séguin’s work are extremely rare.

The bijoutier François Séguin was born in Paris on 17 November 1749. He is first recorded in St Petersburg as ‘maître joaillier et marchand bijoutier’, living at Bolshaya Morskaya in December 1776. He became master on 9 December 1779. In 1786 he was registered in the 3rd Merchants’ Guild and was appointed alderman of the Foreign Goldsmiths’ Guild (Ausländisches Amt der Gold- Silber- und Galanteriarbeiter) in 1790. By 1787, he evidently needed more professional assistance as he arranged for a jeweller from Paris, J. F. Maitriot, to join his business in St Petersburg. The contract drawn up by his notaire in Paris specifies that Maitriot should be able to make boxes, their lining, and ‘perfectly finish the hinges’, the most difficult task. In exchange for this he would be paid 1,200 louis a year, fed and lodged for a term of three years and given his passage from Paris, by sea from Le Havre, at a cost of 400 louis.

In 1782, listed as a Protestant, Séguin had married the Genevoise Jacqueline Dumont, thus becoming the brother-in-law of the better known jewellers to the Imperial court, Jean Pierre Ador (1724–1782) and Louis David Duval (1727–1788), and of the Protestant pastor of St Petersburg, Pierre Etienne Louis Dumont (1759 1829), later a liberal writer and politician, in the early 1780s. Séguin died on 7 April 1795 (it is said ‘d’une fièvre chaude’) and was buried three days later in the Volkovskoe cemetery. Their two sons François Louis and Jean Louis were later to claim Geneva citizenship through their mother, and their daughter Andrienne married her first cousin Louis Etienne Jean François Duval, thus becoming connected to the Soret, Théremin and Töpffer families.

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