An ivory box with hinged lid, the lid set with a dial to record the score of a card game, the surface covered with decoration, including human figures, in yellow stain, applied with wax resist, the detail added in penwork and paint. The inside of the lid is inscribed at the bottom 'Mariaval le Jeune à Paris fecit'. The box contains 32 counters.

Ivory box with, mostly stained yellow with a wax-resist technique, with black pen decoration imitating engraving and with some painted decoration in a limited range of colours on areas left white. The decoration relates to the suit of clubs.

The sides of the box and the moulded edges of the lid are yellow. The lid is attached with two brass hinges, attached to the box with rivets passing from the inside, through a serpentine cross-bar which unites the two hinge fixings. On the lid, the plates of the hinge are attached by small screws, from the inner surface of the back of the lid.

The underside of the box is decorated with a panel showing a spray of foliage and fruit, with floral decoration in the quadrants in the corners. The lid of the box is mounted with a central roundel with a heart-shaped piercing, which when it turns on a central pin, reveals Arabic numerals from 1 to 9 and the letter X. The top surface of this dial is decorated with flowers. On either side of it are oval panels of pen decoration, that on the left showing peasants dancing. The inside of the lid shows a white panel decorated with flowers and a butterfly, and inscribed below 'Mariaval le Jeune à Paris fecit'.

The box contains 32 counters (19 long narrow octagons of 20 originally; 4 shorter octagons of 5 originally; 9 circular of 10 originally), decorated in a similar technique, some of the circular counters with mottoes.

19 long rectangular counters (:2-:20)/ Each of these is 6.4 cm long and 0.9 cm wide. They are rectangular, with canted corners, each pierced with a pinhole in the middle of one short side. They are decorated with white shapes and a border in resist on a yellow ground, with a central pen-drawn flower head in black on white. The pinhole on all the coloured-ground counters suggests that some sort of resist technique has been used and the counters strung on thread to be dipped into dye, before the details was added. The decoration is irregular, suggesting that no stencil was used.

4 shorter, broader, rectangular counters (:21-:24). Each of these is 3.2 cm long and 1.2 cm wide. They show canted corners and are similarly decorated on each side to the longer counters, but with a number (10,20,40 or 50) in the centre (30 is missing). These counters also show pinholes in the middle of one shorter side.

9 circular counters (:25-:33). Each of these is 2.3 cm in diameter. They are decorated in yellow, with details in black penwork and polychrome. One side of each shows a spotted border of yellow, with a central flowerhead on a white ground. These are also pierced with a pinhole at the top of the design on each. One face of each is decorated with a vandyked border in black on white, and with different central motifs on each, with a motto as follows:
:25 insect on flower; 'La douceur mattire'
:26 flower and clouds; 'J'attens mon soleil'
:27 worm chopped in half; Je rejoinder ou mourir'
:28 two burning hearts, spotted or wounded; 'Nous nouons qu'un feu'
:29 winged, flaming heart; 'Elles l'emportent'.
:30 winged, flaming heart; 'Jayme le plus en feu'.
:31 set square and plumb line; 'toujours droit'.
:32 rose and two leaves; 'Point de roses sans espines'
:33 heart in a glass [?] of liquid; 'Le Coeur si fait connaitre'.

Given by Miss Susanna Pearce Emery MBE

This box and the other three in the set were made and signed in the workshop of Mariaval le Jeune (Mariaval the Younger). He seems to have made a speciality of such boxes, stained with this form of wax resist, with details added in penwork and paint. Such boxes are traditionally attributed to a tabletier, a maker of small boxes, of this name, who worked in Paris and, possibly, Rouen. A notarial deed dated 1727 records the name of a Claude-François Mariaval who was engraver to the king (graveur du roi). This could be the maker of the boxes, or more likely, it was his son who made them. A Jean-Prosper Mariaval was active c. 1759 as a cartographer, who published a map of the route from Paris to Rouen via Mantes and Vernon. A note of his life may have given rise to the suggestion that the boxes were made in Rouen.

Such boxes were popular accessories in a society devoted to card playing and gambling.

Sets of boxes decorated in the same technique appear regularly at auction and others are held by museums, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (inv. no. 2001.238.2), the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. M.17&A-X-1938) and the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. A set stained brown, yellow, red (and one unstained) was offered for sale by Sotheby's, New York, 14 June 1999, lot 18. This set was in a Russian outer case. A closely similar set was offered by Bonham's, London, 13 May 2008, lot 82 (sale number 16386)One or more of the boxs in most of these sets is signed by Mariaval. Another set was offered for sale by Serge Davidian, 'Le Curieux', Marché Biron, Stand 126, Saint-Ouen, in 2009. The ivory of this was either left natural or stained a light brown.

Formerly, the boxes were dated as early as 1690 but they must have been made in the years around the middle of the 18th century, although in a rather old-fashioned style of decoration. Another set in the V&A collections (Museum no. 1444-1902) shows portrait profiles of Louis Ferdinand, Dauphin of France (1729-1765) and his second wife, Marie Josephe de Saxe (1731-1767) who did not marry until 1747.

Such boxes were made in sets of four to hold counters for a card game, probably the game of reversis, an old Italian game, from which the games of hombre and quadrille were derived in the 18th century. Such games were popular throughout Europe at the time, particularly quadrille. The four boxes were coloured green (for diamonds), red (for spades), yellow (for clubs) and white (for hearts). The counters for such boxes were made in three shapes. The longer octagonal ones carry no numerical value but the shorter octagonal ones are each marked with a multiple of ten from 10 to 50. The disc-shaped counters carry individual mottoes but no valued.

The three coloured boxes (green, red and yellow) of this four-box set of counter boxes were presumably decorated by a wax-resist technique of staining, which was then further decorated with penwork and painting. The coloured counters each show a minute pierced hole near the edge, suggesting that they were strung on a thread, after the wax was applied, and then dipped into coloured stain. The white counters have no such holes. The technique seems to have been used mainly for such boxes but the Fan Museum at Greenwich is said to have a fan with stick decorated in such a manner.

This box is one of a set of four made to contain the counters necessary for playing a card game, probably reversis. This was an old Italian card game, the basis for two very popular 18th-century games, hombre and quadrille. Card playing was a necessary accomplishment for those hoping to take their place in polite society and all manner of people played at many levels of society. Such counter boxes would have been a luxurious and fashionable accessory for a card player of either sex.

The boxes and counters were colour coded to relate to the suits of a pack of cards. Green was for diamonds, red for spades, yellow for clubs and white for hearts. Although these boxes are signed by the maker, Mariaval, we know little about him, except that he obviously had a large trade in such items, as many sets survive. He may have been the son of the engraver to the king.

W.21D/1 to 33-1985