Simply fabulous! I was just in Florence for a week last autumn, and as I always do in Florence, I walked over to the antiques shop along the Arno, very near the Ponte Vecchio, to see their selection of fine old Victorian Grand Tour items, boxes with pietra dura plaques - ones similar to this one. I do this to look at the prices they've set, which I will tell you are 3-10 times our prices on these rare old boxes. The larger they are, the more proportionally high they become. And something like this splendid one would be in the 4500 euro range. My suggestion is always to buy these from us and pretend you bought it there in Florence (where they were made), and save the money AND the luggage overweight charges. These are heavy boxes! Thick bronze alloy with a high gilt nature, as you can see, a beautiful display piece for the hand cit and worked marble specimen mosaic plaque up top. That marble plaque is about .5" thick, as they usually are. You can see it from the backside, too, from inside.
Very good to excellent. No dents, no loss or hairline or cracks to the marble plaque. No damage at all. Even has the old original working key still with it. I suspect there was a matching claret red silk velvet liner for the interior lid, which has gone missing. It might have been gold-embossed with the maker's name. But you can see the condition and status of this superb box as it is now. Lind the inner lid if you'd like, with matching silk fabric. Clean inside, no stains. No odors. Ready for your favorite jewelry, or perhaps your treasured love letters, tied with a ribbon.
