A gold and hardstone portrait snuff box presented by Frederick Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, to the Danish envoy Christian Sehestedt Juul, by Johann Christian Neuber, signed: Neuber a Dresde, Dresden, circa 1770

oval, the lid inset with a miniature portrait on ivory of Frederick Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, attributed to the Saxon Court miniaturist Christian Gottlieb Doist (1740-1814), almost full face, with powdered hair en queue and wearing armour with a lacy jabot, within an engraved gold frame, the ground, sides and base inlaid with a trelliswork of striped grey or red Schlottwitz agate on a carnelian ground, the borders garlanded with double and single forget-me-not flowers and laurel, that encircling the miniature bound with white ribbons, the gold rims engraved with interlacing ribbons and rosettes, the borders with chevron designs

Accompanied by a manuscript deposition written by Juul's widow, Lucia Charlotte Juul, née Scheel (1765-1839), inscribed: cette boite d'Or est donnée de l'Electeur de / Saxe à feu mon Mari 1770

Presented by Elector Frederick Augustus III (1750-1827) to Christian Sehestedt Juul (1741-1788) in 1770;
thence by descent 

Alexis Kugel ed., Gold, Jasper and Carnelian, Johann Christian Neuber at the Saxon Court, London 2012, no. 119, pp. 166-7, 355

Very good condition overall thanks to being kept in the same family. Would benefit from professional cleaning, however, particularly of ingrained sediment in engraving of gold and under glass of miniature as there is slight mould and dust etc. mainly on left side. There is very slight fading to miniature. The flowers are composed of various materials, including hardstone and coloured glass paste, to give the variety of colours. Deterioration of a few beads and petals, especially two turquoise-coloured beads and one yellow at 6 o'clock on lid, and one turquoise on top rim of front. The front rim has three gold inlaid segments which appear to be original to the box since the gold is the same colour, they do not fluoresce under UV light and some comparable segments are also found on other Neuber boxes, such as the 'panier de pensées' (Sotheby's London, 6 July 2010, lot 15). Interior with minute dents consistent with use. No cracked or replaced panels but tiny nicks to edges of some inlay. What does not show up clearly on the images is the subtle play of colours in the stones: slightly different greens in the leaves and in the blues of the turquoise-coloured petals which add movement to the piece. The few small flaws mentioned above, commensurate with the age of the piece, do not detract from the overall beauty of this historical box.
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Christian Sehestedt Juul (1741-1788) was named after the Danish foreign minister and diplomat Christian Sehestedt (born 1660) who had died childless in 1740. His widow, Charlotte Amalie Gersdorff, had entailed the estates of Ravnholt, which she had inherited from her father, and that of Nislevgård, inherited from her husband, for the benefit of the children and descendants of her niece and foster-daughter Sophie Hedwig Frijs and her husband Ove Juul.¹ Their eldest son, Christian Sehestedt Juul  (who, with subsequent generations, had also taken the surname of the family benefactor) had first followed his father into the army but then entered the Danish foreign service, not only a promising career for a young nobleman but also following in the steps of his deceased patron.

In 1768, at the age of 27, he was appointed envoyé extraordinaire to the court at Dresden where Frederick Augustus was about to take over the reins of government of Saxony from his regent uncle, on achieving his majority. Dresden was considered an agreeable posting: the city was ‘light, straight, white, tidy’ in the words of Colonel Robert Murray Keith, the contemporary British envoy  from 1768 to 1771. The work was not onerous  - at ten o’clock, ‘Business of Europe, - with a little music now and then, pour égayer les affaires’, at twelve, ‘Devoirs, at one or other of the Courts (for we have three or four). From  thence, to fine ladies, toilettes and tender things’.²  The most important duty was to gather any  information about the local situation, politics or opinions which might be of diplomatic interest at home.

Juul retained his appointment until the autumn of 1770, writing his last official reports to the Danish foreign minister, Johan Hartvig Ernst Bernstorff, in September of that year before being transferred as envoy to the Spanish court in Madrid.³ It is presumed that following courtly tradition, this box was given to Juul on his departure from Dresden, just as Keith was given a porcelain service by the Elector and ‘a very handsome snuff-box of Saxon stones with her picture’ by the Dowager Electress. This  supposition is confirmed by the brief explanatory note still preserved within the box, written after Christian Sehestedt Juul’s death in 1788 by his widow Lucia Charlotte Juul, née Scheel, whom he had married on 13 October 1780.

Johann Christian Neuber (1736–1808) was one of the most creative artist-craftsmen patronised by the royal court at Dresden. He was apprenticed to Johann Friedrich Trechaon in 1752, at the age of 17. In 1762 he became master goldsmith and burgher of Dresden, succeeding Heinrich Taddel as director of the Grünes Gewölbe, and before 1775 he was also appointed court jeweller. It was from Taddel, his father-in-law and mentor, that Neuber acquired his knowledge of precious stones and how to work them. Neuber advertised a wide range of objects made from inlaid hardstones including boxes for ladies and gentlemen, cane handles, watch cases, chatelaines, and jewellery such as bracelets and rings. His distinctive style was popular both at court and with the many visitors who flocked to Dresden as it rebuilt itself after the Seven Years’ War. This individual style was eventually counter-productive with a novelty-seeking public and by the end of the 1780s, his over-extended enterprise started to suffer increasingly severe financial problems. These eventually led to Neuber’s retreat from Dresden in 1805 to the house of his son Christian Adolf in Eibenstock where he died on 2 April 1808.⁴

Certain themes recur in Neuber’s boxes but each is an individual, and different, work of art. The present box uses a woven trellis to suggest the idea of a basket and emphasises the forget-me-not flowers with double clusters as well as the more usual single flower garlands. The name forget-me-not, in English, for the myosotis flower, comes directly from the old German name Vergessmeinnicht which dates from the Middle Ages. The flower is rich with associations and legends in Germanic  lore, with which both Neuber and the Saxon court would have been familiar, including the charming story of how, when God was naming the flowers, a tiny insignificant plant piped up “Forget me not, oh Lord”, to which God replied “That shall be your name”. Perhaps more often associated with parting lovers, in this case the flower, symbolic of faithfulness and loyalty, also served as a delicate reminder to the departing  foreign envoy that he should not forget the Elector and his service in Dresden.

The note accompanying the present box makes it one of the earliest recorded boxes which can be attributed to Neuber. Although he is known to have been active in the 1760s, the first recorded signed and dated box, formerly in the Green Vaults, Dresden (Kugel, op. cit., no. 17) was inscribed: Neuber à Dresde 1770, the same year as the present box. It is also the first of the five surviving diplomatic boxes given by the Elector, the second having been awarded to Keith’s successor as British envoy to the Saxon Court, John Osborne, in 1775 (Kugel, op. cit., no. 120).

The tradition of presenting snuff boxes as royal or diplomatic gifts goes back to the early 18^th century. The French kings had for several generations given important visitors the so-called boîtes à portrait which consisted of a miniature portrait of the monarch set within a valuable diamond frame. In the 1720s, the miniatures began to be inserted into tabatières.⁵ These French diplomatic snuff boxes are recorded and are the subject of an article to be published shortly. The ravages of time and war have destroyed many of the Saxon records and so the records of the presentation of diplomatic gifts no longer survive. Luckily this box, and its precious note, have been safely preserved by the family until the present day.

¹Th. Thaulow, Stamhuset Ravnholt-Nislevgaard-Hellerups Godhistorie med sœrligt Henblik paa Herregaarden Ravnholt, Copenhagen, 1957, p. 67.
²Ed. Mrs Gillespie Smith, Memoirs and Correspondence (official and familiar) of Sir Robert Murray Keith, K.B., London, 1849, vol. I, p. 117.
³Much of the correspondence, in French and often encrypted, between Juul and Bernstorff is still extant in the Danish National Archives.
⁴ Walter Holzhausen, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, 1935
⁵ Anna Somers Cocks & Charles Truman, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Renaissance jewels, gold boxes, etc., London, 1984, pp. 19/20.