This snuffbox incorporates the salient features of the fashionable gold box in Paris in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Of shallow rectangular form with rounded corners – cut corners would have been an alternative in the first years of the period – it is decorated with a small repeat engine-turned pattern. The disc motif used here was much favoured by Parisian goldsmiths including Montauban, Huguet and Vachette, as well as being employed by firms such as Moulinié, Bautte & Moynier in Geneva. The sablé ground borders are chased in low relief with flowers and foliate scrolls, to which architectural motifs such as anthemion were sometimes added. Details of the border decoration could be highlighted with blue enamel.

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