• Facets (new session)
• Description
• Metadata
• Settings
  • owl:sameAs
  • Inference Rule: asEquivalentb3sb3sifpfacetshttp://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#ldpoplwebskos-transvirtrdf-labelvirtrdf-urlNone
    

These boxes may have been made in the workshop of Mariaval le Jeune (Mariaval the Younger). He seems to have made a speciality of such boxes, featuring ivory 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. Sets of boxes decorated in the same technique appear regularly at auction and others are held by museums, including the Musées des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. One or more of the boxes in most of these sets is signed by Mariaval. The boxes must have been made in the years around the middle of the 18th century, although in a rather old-fashioned style of decoration. They show 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.