A gold and wood presentation table box, Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co Ltd, London, 1937

The present lot was presented to Brian Charles Sweeny, born on 5 April 1940, as the son of the American businessman Charles Francis Sweeny (1909-1993) and the famous Scottish heiress and socialite Ethel Margaret Campbell, née Whigham, formerly Sweeny and later Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993). Brian Charles Sweeny was one of the three children of Margaret's first marriage in 1933. The wedding took place at Brompton Oratory in London; her most glamorous wedding dress by the iconic British fashion designer Norman Hartnell, who also was the Royal Dress Maker to the Queen Mother, reportedly brought Knightsbridge traffic to a halt for three hours on her wedding day. Her beauty was much spoken of, and in 1951 she famously married her second husband Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, followed by an even more famous, scandalous divorce twelve years later which was heavily publicised.

Richard Tauber (1891-1948), who presented the present gold box by Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co Ltd to his godson - presumably on the occasion of his christening - was an Austrian opera singer and actor. Nick-named 'King of Belcanto' by the press, he frequently performed at the Vienna and the Berlin State Opera in the 1920s and sang the tenor in operas such as Don Giovanni, Tosca and Faust. Tauber's London debut followed in 1931 in operetta and in 1938, he made his London operatic debut in Die Zauberflöte under Sir Thomas Beecham and the Philharmonic Orchestra. Of Jewish heritage, Tauber left Austria after the annexation by the German Nazi government in 1938 and and in March 1940, just a couple of months before this gold box was presented to his god-son, he had received British citizenship. Tauber died in London in 1947.