A gold and enamel scent bottle, probably Swedish, mid-18th century

Although unmarked it is probable that this scent bottle was made in Sweden where the fashion for green or blue basse-taille enamels, copying those from Paris, was particularly strong around 1760. For two rectangular snuff boxes decorated in blue basse-taille enamel with figural subjects surrounded by clusters of very similar fowers on diaper or vannerie grounds, both maker's mark of Andreas Almgren, Stockholm, 1759 and undated, see Bo Bramsen, Nordiske Snusdåser, Copenhagen, 1965, p. 284, figs. 680 & 681. For an oval box, also enamelled in blue basse-taille, with an overall decoration of very similar flowers on a patterned ground, Frants Bergs, Stockholm, 1756, see A. Kenneth Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, Woodbridge, 1990, pl. 848.