Featured enamel top silver cigarett box country of manufacture?

Hello Members
As I mentioned I collect silver boxes,I hope it is alright for me to post some of them?
as most of them are not marked,I tend to by the workmanship and not a mark.
this one is marked 935 only. It is then interesting to try and research where they may have been made.

Regards Giotto

 

I suspect German. Is that plaque ceramic or metal?

 

Beautiful piece. @Bronwen - what is going on with that cupid? What is he holding and what is lying against his leg?

 

Looks like a lit torch!

Debora

 

Oh my goodness. Do you know the meaning?

 

Besides first degree burns?

Debora

 

Stunning, Giotto. Generally speaking 935 is German or Austrian/Austro-Hungarian. Germany made more porcelain plaques, but Austria also made some beauties.

All right? Yes please!

He is holding a white dove, and the thing against his leg is a quiver with arrows. Cupid. The lady is Venus.

 

Venus and Cupid (and white doves) by Jean Fragonard:

 

Excellent. That's the scene all right. I know nothing about mythology and I love that this forum gives me an insight. Thank you

 

Of course! That makes much more sense.

Debora

 

You guys have already put it together. Doves & pearls (& nudity) are commonly seen with Aphrodite/Venus.



Quiver of arrows is correct here, but a torch, for inflaming passion, is also one of the attributes of Eros/Cupid. He often turns up with it in scenes of other people to indicate a couple are lovers.

 

Here Venus is using a scallop shell as her couch.

 

I was thinking a KPM plaque.

 

With that blue bow in her hair, I'd be thinking 1920s into the 1930s, date-wise.

 

Hello
thanks for all the replys
The plaque is enamel painted on copper,KPM plaques were on pocelain.
This plaque is Venus and cupid at the bath (1738) originally painted by Francios Boucher !703-1770.

I have attached black& white copy of original.
Regards Giotto.

 

image correct way up.

 

metal surface looks Franco-Swiss from the Jura region. both sides of the boarder there were machines from the horlogerie trade easily available to produce such patterns.

 

Hi Fid

many thanks for your info.

The patterns engraved on a rose engine lathe,also called engine turning, or gilloche work,it can be plain like on my box ,or can be enameled over the top with clear enamel to show the intricate pattern under the enamel .

As you say was much used on expensive Swiss watch cases.

Regards Giotto.

 

not only on watch cases. Switzerland had a long tradition of enamelling and painting with fluid enamel. but they didn't care very much with signatures and marks etc.. could be because they were all anarchists that didn't need their names on luxury items.
the same lads that lateron delivered mechanical fuzes to the RAF because the British ones were too unreliable in 1940/41. as usual on donkey backs over the frontiers by night; down south through the demilitarized zone between France and Italy; small ports and then to bigger British ships by rowboat.

 

The Swiss (and others) sometimes put fake French marks on their boxes. At the time, France was considered the epicenter of box production. But the Swiss boxes could be right up there in quality, and the fake marks weren't particularly convincing. Because the quality is there, these marks are now referred to as "prestige marks".