an important russian vari-color gold, enamel and jeweled snuff box mounted with a portrait miniature, andreas ferdinand spiegel, st. petersburg, 1856

enameled translucent rich red over a guilloché ground, the vari-color gold borders chased with foliage on a matted ground, the hinged cover mounted with an enamel miniature of Louis XIV within a diamond-set foliate frame

Andreas Ferdinand Spiegel (1797-1862) was a leading St. Petersburg goldsmith and served as master to apprentice Gustav Fabergé, father of Carl Fabergé.
Spiegel was awarded a prize at the All-Russian Industrial Art Exhibition of 1829. See, Larissa Zavadskaya, Gold and Silver in St. Petersburg 1830-1850, an essay within Fabergé, Imperial Craftsman and his World, by G. von Habsburg, Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 2000, p.48.
Another gold snuff box by Spiegel, St. Petersburg, 1850, mounted with a portrait miniature of Grand Duke Alexander Nicholaevich (later Alexander II) by Hau, is reproduced by Alexander von Solodkoff, Russian Gold and Silverwork, Rizzoli, New York, 1981, p.155, no.208