A Gold and Enamel Snuff Box, Jean Joseph Barrière, Paris, 1781/1782

The distinct tobacco color of the enamel chosen for this box by Barrière was another very popular trend among the most fashionable Parisians and, correspondingly, their gold box makers in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which was en vogue for a season or two. For another gold box in the same translucent tobacco color which would match the gentleman's attire, also dated 1781/1782 and made by the prolific Joseph Etienne Blerzy, see the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 1975.1.1544.

Jean-Joseph Barrière became master in 1763, sponsored by Henri Delobel. He worked on the pont-Notre-Dame until 1786 when his shop and dwelling were pulled down during the reconstruction of the bridge; then moving to the rue Coq Saint-Honoré where he is recorded until the Terror in 1793. Barrière was one of the more productive Parisian goldsmiths: the Louvre owns ten examples of his work; Fürst Carl Anselm von Thurn und Taxis’s collection of gold boxes, largely bought at the time of manufacture, contained eight (Lorenz Seelig, Golddosen des 18. Jahrhunderts aus dem Besitz der Fürsten von Thurn und Taxis, Munich, 2007, nos. 7, 8, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22 and 25). 

Engraving source:

Telemachus in the desert of Oasis is consoled by Termisoris, high priest of Apollo, engraving by C. Grignion after an illustration by C. Monnet, 1778 © Florilegius / Bridgeman Images