Victorian artist’s box, $5000 (£4000) at Briggs Auction Co.
Made by Parisian luxury goods firm Maison Giroux, the rosewood and brass case (with locks marked Alph. Giroux et Cie. a Paris) opens to reveal both series of silver-plated wells, pigment bottles and mixing bowls plus a full complement of gold-inlaid drawing aids, knives and brushes.
Victorian artist’s box, $5000 (£4000) at Briggs Auction Co.
Inlaid to the lids with the imperial crown of Russia, the box is understood to have been a gift in 1875 from Polish-Lithuanian nobleman Duke Radziwill to the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (1822-92), the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Charlotte of Prussia.
It was more recently owned by Tammis Day, the granddaughter of oil magnate William Myron Keck, and had sold as part of her estate by John Moran in Monrovia, California, in 2017 for $4750.
Camera pioneer
Maison Giroux, founded by the art restorer and ébéniste François-Simon-Alphonse Giroux at the end of the 18th century, was based first at Rue du Coq-Saint-Honoré and, after 1857, at Boulevard des Capucines.
The firm is best known as the maker of the first commercially manufactured photographic camera: Giroux was the brother-in-law of Louis Daguerre and agreed to manufacture and retail his curious new device in 1839.
