Box

This wooden casket was made in the second quarter of the 19th century. In is partly decorated with coloured flowers and embossed with a gilt paper overlay. Its gentle, bulging, openable cover is especially noteworthy. Underneath it a greeting card, fashionable in its time, can be seen: idyllic landscapes on two mother-of-pearl plates. One of them shows a sunrise, the other a shore in moonlight. The composition is made on a tulle base, with colourful, embossed paper flowers. There is an inscription on a paper ribbon below: Jeder Morgen bring’ Entzücken, Wie Aurorens Strahl so rein, / Süsse Ruh’ soll Sie beglücken, Bricht die Nacht dann sanft herein. I. E. (quotation from a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff /1788–1857/). The master of the casket is the specialist of artistic Viennese greeting cards, the so called Kunstbillet, engraver Johann Endletzberger, who usually made individual artworks in practice miniature collages encased in paper or copper frames. In the inside of the box’ cover there is a coloured engraving in a gilt paper frame: a girl planting roses, with swans in the background, and a small cottage – its ambience recalls the fairy tales by the Grimm brothers. The inside contains small compartments, safeguarding secret drawers, just like contemporary desks – and the promises of secrets. The engraving is marked: Berlin, bei C. G. Lüderitz No.7.