Gold box, set with 77 numbered specimen stones identified in a book inside the box, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, about 1785-90. Book identifying stones. Case.

Circular gold box, set with 77 numbered specimens of stone, identified in a book inside the box, and flowers carved in hardstone, within a frame of simulated pearls of reverse-painted rock crystal pearls.

Joanna Whalley, FGA, head of Metals Conservation at the V&A, has contributed the following note:

'Inlaid with varieties of jasper, agate, silicified and fossilised wood as well as amethyst. The transparent and translucent specimens are backed with paint in the colours cream, green, black and purple. The pearl simulants are made from rock crystal carved with a hollow on the underside which has been coated with a silver precipitate. The flowers in relief are made from reverse-painted and carved rock crystal, carnelian, bloodstone, moss agate, white banded agate and turquoise.'

Booklet with cover of card covered in pink silk. Four sheets of paper, folded to make eight pages sewn at the folding line in the centre. The title page is inscribed in black ink in French as below. The reverse of the title page is blank. On the six pages which follow is a numbered list, 1 to 77, identifying the specimen stones mounted in the box.

Accepted under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government from Nicholas Snowman and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2017

Alexis Kugel (see references) suggests that the box was probably in the collection of Baron Schröder.
Christie's, London, 5 July 1910, lot 240
Sotheby's, London, 14 December 1950 (£520 to Spink).
King Farouk of Egypt.
Sold by Sotheby's, Cairo, 10-17 March 1954, lot 702. Bought by Kenneth Snowman, acting for Wartski.
Sold by Wartski to Charles E. D. Taylor, a schoolmaster from Hastings.
It passed from Charles Taylor to Kenneth Snowman.
On loan at the Victoria and Albert Museum with the Kenneth and Sallie Snowman Collection, 1997-2017.
Cultural Gift donated by Nicholas Snowman, 2017.

This is one of twelve objects presented from the Kenneth and Sallie Snowman Collection by their son, Nicholas. Eleven were given in 2017 under the Cultural Gifts Scheme administered by HM Government. The twelfth, a ring with a cameo of Elizabeth I, was given through the Art Fund in 2016.

Kenneth Snowman (1919-2002) was described on his death by Terence Mullaly as ‘one of the last leading representatives of the London art market’s golden age’. His father, Emanuel Snowman, married the daughter of Morris Wartski, a pedlar in North Wales whose talents made him the owner of a Rolls-Royce with shops in Bangor and Mostyn Street, Llandudno, the ‘golden half-mile’ which was said to boast more royal warrants than anywhere outside London. In 1927 Emanuel made his first purchases of works of art sold by the Soviet Government, the foundation of Wartski’s pre-eminence as an international dealer in Fabergé. Kenneth remembered seeing them laid out on the mantelpiece and bookshelves of the morning room of their house in Hampstead. Aiming at first to be an artist, Kenneth studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and earned a fee in 1939 through his illustrations, drawn more from Gray’s Anatomy than from life, for the best-selling Technique of Sex written by Elliot Philipp under the pseudonym of Anthony Havil. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon, but a bazaar at which Sallie Moghi-Levkine (1919-95) presided over the tombola had introduced him to the love of his life and in due course the need to find a more reliable income. He joined the family firm and, making full use of Sallie’s Russian, brought to Fabergé scholarship a new energy and authority.

In an interval at the Royal Opera House on 7 January 1976 he sketched out for Sir Roy Strong a plan for the Fabergé exhibition he curated at the V&A to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, a legendary success which had 150,000 visitors queuing down the Brompton Road, brought the hot-dog sellers over from the Science Museum, and inspired exhibitions across Europe and North America. Wartski became famous for its scholarship, exhibitions and books. Kenneth Snowman’s eminence as an authority on Fabergé carried him into a short story by Ian Fleming, The Property of a Lady, later incorporated in the plot of the film Octopussy. James Bond ‘looked Mr Snowman straight in the eyes’ and said “Will you give me a hand?”.

Kenneth Snowman wrote with even greater affection and no less authority on gold boxes. Eighteenth-Century Gold Boxes of Europe, first published in 1966, was revised in 1990. One of the great influences on Fabergé’s work was Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), court goldsmith at Dresden, and two examples of his work are included in Nicholas Snowman’s gift.

This is a Steinkabinett box by Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), court goldsmith at Dresden. It is composed of 77 numbered specimens of minerals from Saxony, a geological museum for the pocket or the table. Inside in a booklet is a list of the stones with their places of origin. As an advertisement for similar boxes by Neuber stated in 1786: ‘The stones are all numbered, none appears twice, and a small accompanying list details their names. In this way luxury, taste and science are united’. The ‘pearls’ are characteristic of Neuber. They will never chip because they are made of rock crystal and completely flat, the illusion of roundness created because they are carved underneath in the shape of a dome painted in silver.

M.10:1 to 4-2017