Snuffbox

The long, prismatic box is decorated with narrow lines engraved parallelly on the sides and the cover. The small, gold and silver relief pictures of three colours were soldered on these lines. The three colours were achieved with different alloys of gold: red, if the main alloying component is copper yellow, if the components are copper and silver in equal amounts and green, if the main component is silver. Alloying was necessary to avoid the "softness", that is, the wearing of gold. Necessity in this case brought a new way of decoration. The cover is decorated with a scene of boar-hunting, with the figure of the hunter and the attacking dogs. The bottom shows a hunter and his dog watching ducks from a hide on a lake- shore. On the sides are animals hiding among ruins and trees (deer and rabbits). All scenes are framed by stretching foliage, which lines the edges. The inside of the cover and the bottom show French marks with crowns.