A four-colour gold snuff box, Charles Le Bastier, Paris, 1759/60

Charles Le Bastier was born in 1724 and apprenticed to Gabriel Vougny, marchand-orfèvre-joaillier, on 3 October 1738. With the sponsorship of Jean Moynat, himself a renowned gold box maker, Le Bastier became master goldsmith on 20 December 1754. He worked in the rue Thévenot, near the rue St-Denis, presumably until 1783, when he was last recorded. Le Bastier was a successful and prolific maker of gold boxes who also supplied other retailers such as Jean-François Garand and Grancher of Du Petit Dunkerque, whose name appears engraved on the rims of several of Le Bastier's gold boxes. In the special tax list of 1774, he was listed 9th in order of the importance of his business. Since a number of Le Bastier's boxes survive in various collections (most notably in the Louvre and the Thurn und Taxis collection, Regensburg), it is possible to trace the progression of his work from the earliest silver boxes with coloured gold ornament through a series of richly chased examples to the almost immediately recognisable gold and brightly-enamelled boxes of his maturity. A chased varicoloured gold box of similar construction and quality by Le Bastier, dated a year later than the present lot, belongs to the collection of gold boxes at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (inv. no 48.187.434, bequest of Catherine D. Wentworth).