Fabulous antique French Belle Epoque era Grand Tour style souvenir jewel casket, a lovely box in a unique hexagonal shape with thick beveled glass sides and eglomise (reverse painted) glass scene of the Palais du Trocadero on top! This one simply marked "Paris" but shows the Trocadero Palace, built for the 1878 Exposition Universelle and later demolished to be replaced with the Palais de Chaillot in 1937. We recently acquired several of these wonderful little French souvenir caskets and will be adding them in the coming weeks. This one with very thick beveled glass panels, six panels around the sides and the larger top with the scene transferred & painted on the under side.
"Eglomise" is the term applied to the back-painted glass panels in these old French souvenirs. Most of them date 1800s, though they were made up through about 1910 in this manner, too. Later ones often have a photo set in instead. The early ones are our favorites, sometimes a screened ink-line like drawing that is then hand colored, or sometimes a full miniature painting original, all worked on the back side of a panel or convex plaque of glass. There are sometimes open spots left and a final step is application of thin mother of pearl panels so that the windows shimmer with pearlescent light, or architectural details are pearl - you can see how fun those are. I'm listing a whole collection from this genre, one at a time
Very good condition. It appears that the fabric inner base liner is a later addition/restoration. Possibly a tiny edge nip or two but no larger chips or cracks. The eglomise scene is in great shape, as you can see in the images. See pictures for all measurements.
