Fabulous antique French Napoleon III Grand Tour style souvenir jewel casket, a lovely box with eglomise (reverse painted) glass scene entitled "Place et R. de Lyon"! 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, four panels around the sides and the larger top with the scene transferred & painted on the back 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. Possibly a tiny nip or two to the glass panels and there is a small chip on the lower rear corner of the left side. The eglomise scene is in great shape with only a few small 'bubble' spots and a missing bit of blue sky in the rear left corner. Original inner tufted pale blue silk or satin base pad/lining is quite tattered. See pictures for all measurements.
