Fabulous antique French Napoleon III Grand Tour style souvenir jewel casket, a lovely box in a unique hexagonal shapewith thick beveled glass sides and eglomise (reverse painted) glass scene of Le Palais de Justice in Beauvais on top! 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. There is a small chip on the right side third glass panel, lower right corner) and also one on the lower right corner of the third panel on the left side. No larger chips or cracks. The eglomise scene is in great shape, as you can see in the images. Original inner tufted pale blue silk or satin base pad/lining, somewhat aged. See pictures for all measurements.
