{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O85284"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O85284/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BB1174/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BB1174/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2006BB1174","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006BB1173","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2006BB1172","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O85284/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O85284","accessionNumber":"1708:1,2-1900","objectType":"Box","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"This box would have been used on a dressing table, probably as part of a large set of boxes, brushes, candlesticks and a small mirror. In 1689 French laws made it illegal to manufacture luxury items from precious metals, as silver was needed to pay for Louis XIV’s foreign wars. The carvers of Nancy in the independent Duchy of Lorraine (now in eastern France) made a great success of these carved versions of such pieces, made from a very fine-grained cherry wood known as bois de Sainte-Lucie. Both the forms and the decoration were based on contemporary silverware.  The trade continued until at least the 1740s. In the nineteenth century this type of decoration was associated with the name of a carver from Nancy, César Bagard (1620- 1709), but all his known work is large-scale and sculptural. It is likely that several workshops in the city made such small pieces, which survive in large numbers.","physicalDescription":"<u>Design</u>\r\n\r\nThe design follows a common form for silver boxes of the period.  The shallow body is covered with a hinged lid, which has a broad, concave frame rising from the shallow, vertical edge panels to support the flat central panel.  The box is covered all over with carved decoration.  On the front, sides and back, the box and narrow edge of the lid are carved with recessed panels within plainly moulded frames. The carving on the box is of foliate scrolls with the heads of daisies or sunflowers; that on the sides of the lid shows similar flower heads only. All the carving is set against a dotted, punched, ground. The carving on the concave surfaces of the lid is not in panelled reserves.  The design includes leafy scrolls against a punched ground, with some 'background' leaves worked simply as pairs of opposed striked of a chisel with a curved blade. The top panel has a down- curved edge, carved with upright leaves against a punched ground, with small reserves or 'leaves' also struck with a curved chisel. The main ground of the top is surrounded by a framing band punched with small trefoils, irregularly set, and divided into a shaped central cartouche with a stepped outline of opposed curves, and four shaped corner panels, all carved with scrolling foliage and flower heads, the decoration of the panels set symmetrically and incorporating both fully carved leaves and those formed by opposing chisel strokes. \r\n\r\n<u>Construction</u>\r\n\r\nThe box is built up on a solid base, rebated to receive the sides and extending beyond them to provide a shallow plinth with rounded top edge. The sides are mitred, glued and fixed with small pins through the sides and through the base (some of these replacements). The inner corners are reinforced with small triangular fillets, set vertically, with their lower ends housed within the base rebate, the top edge chamfered. The lid is built on a shallow frame of vertically set boards, mitred and glued, with some pinning at the corners (possibly later). On the lower, inner edge, a narrow fillet (4 mm. square) of oak has been inset on all four sides, probably at the time of replacement of lock and hinges (see below).  Above this, the concave frame of the lid is constructed of boards angled on their lower edges and mitred at their corners, glued to the lower frame and slightly overlapping it, the edges moulded in a narrower version of the base moulding. The board forming the top of the box is glued to the top of this frame without overlapping it, although the edge is rounded and carved. At either side, the board is attached to the frame with pins that have been driven through from the underside of the concave framing sections.This pinning is not found under the front or back edges of the top and is probably a restoration (perhaps done in the Museum) to deal with the warping of the board across the grain.\r\n\r\nThe inner surface of the front of the box is rebated to receive a brass lock, attached with four screws. This is a replacement and an infill of wood is visible on the top edge, to the right, filling a gap left by removal of the original lock. On the front edge of the hinged lid, a narrow recess is visible behind the striking plate. On the sloping framing behind this is a shaped shadow image of a scrolled metal plate, presumably part of the original locking mechanism. One pin remains from the fixing of this. The back of the box is fitted with two brass knuckle hinges, also replacements, and each attached with four screws.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Unknown","id":"A1848"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"bois de Sainte-Lucie","id":"x40970"}],"techniques":[{"text":"carving","id":"AAT53149"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Carved <i>bois de Sainte-Lucie</i>, a type of cherry, carved all over with shallow, scrolling decoration in panels","categories":[{"text":"Containers","id":"THES48972"},{"text":"Woodwork","id":"THES48877"},{"text":"Medieval and renaissance","id":"THES271264"}],"styles":[{"text":"Régence","id":"AAT21089"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"FWK","id":"THES48597"},"images":["2006BB1174","2006BB1173","2006BB1172"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"006","id":"THES302809"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""},{"current":{"text":"004","id":"THES299213"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Key","id":""}],[{"text":"Box","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""},{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Nancy","id":"x29017"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":"almost certainly"}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"ca. 1700-1720","earliest":"1695-01-01","latest":"1720-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Given by Miss G.E. Macgregor","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"9.3","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Length","value":"29.7","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"21.9","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Measured on 15/9/10 by LC","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"This box was offered to the Museum by Mrs M.M. Grosvenor, 47 Canonbury Park North, London, N., as a gift [sic] from her late sister, Miss G.E. Macgregor, who wished it to come to a 'Public Institution'. It was said to have come from '\"the French court\" in the time of the Louis's' but Mrs Grosvenor could offer no documentation for this. The box was first placed on show 'in a case in the first bay after leaving the Refreshment Corridor'.","historicalContext":"This box is a good example of the trade in small-scale carved woodwork, all made in a variety of cherry-wood known as <i>bois de Sainte-Lucie</i>, which grew up in the late-seventeenth century in Nancy, then capital of the independent Duchy of Lorraine (now a province of France).  During the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century these pieces were commonly identified as the work of César Bagard (1620- 1709), sculptor to Duc Charles IV of Lorraine, but all his known work is of large-scale sculpture in the round, rather than such small-scale, decorative pieces.  \r\n\r\nSuch pieces were, however, a widely known production of the city and were probably made by a number of local workshops, working in ebony and box as well as the <i>bois de Sainte-Lucie</i>, which grew in a local forest.  In 1751, a local historian, Dom Calmet (1672-1757) wrote in the <i>Bibliothèque Lorraine</i> that 'the Foulon family were well-known [for this work] in the past and had made many such works for the Dauphin, son of Louis XIV'.  Research in the 1960s showed that a dynasty of carvers called Foulon or Foullon worked in Nancy in the second half of the seventeenth century. César Foulon (died 1698), the founder of the dynasty, was in fact the godfather of César Bagard. An inventory taken after the death of César Foulon in 1698 listed the type of pieces that the workshop made: boxes, mirror frames, brushes, pin-cushions, frames, crucifixes, holy water stoups, candlesticks, chess pieces and tobacco rasps amongst others - every kind of piece that is now commonly given the label 'Bagard'. Other carvers known to have worked in this style include Charles Chassel (died 1685), Claude les Indes (1645-1752), Jean-Baptiste Vallier (1645-1742), Jean-François Lupot (1684-1749) and François Manruisse (active at the end of the seventeenth century). Unfortunately, no pieces associated with a particular workshop have yet been identified. \r\n\r\nThe trade seems to have flourished in the wake of the French sumptuary laws of 1689, which forbade the use of silver for such personal objects and which led to the melting down of silver on a large scale in France to fund the military campaigns of Louis XIV.  Silver disappeared from the toilet tables of courtiers in France and silver trinkets such as tobacco rasps were also given up. The fine grain of the cherry wood allowed the pieces made in Nancy to imitate not only the shape of silver objects but also the fineness of their casting and chasing, in a material that was substantially less expensive, and more easily available than ivory or lacquer.\r\n\r\nThis box illustrates the skill with which the carvers imitated metalwork, both in the overall shape of the box, the arrangement of the ornament on the top in five sections, and in the hierarchy of carving, which showed some scrolls and foliage in high relief, and others just suggested by swift, but certain chisel strokes, imitating the similar hierarchy of decoration on silverwork, from high relief cast decoration to shallow chasing.\r\n\r\nAlthough the high point of production of such carvings seems to have been between 1689 and 1720, the carving workshops of Nancy appear to have continued to produce such pieces until at least the middle of the eighteenth century.  'Bagard' carvings were collected with great vigour in the second half of the nineteenth century and were also copied and faked.\r\n\r\nSee Hélène Demoriane, ‘Bois de Bagard’, ‘Connaissance des Arts', January 1968, pp. 90-93 for a general discussion of the type of carving.","briefDescription":"Box of carved cherry wood (bois de Sainte Lucie), the lid hinged and with concave sides, the whole visible surface covered with intricate arabesque motifs.  Both the shape and the ornament are derived from silver boxes made for the dressing-table. French, Nancy, ca. 1700-1720.  The box has a small, steel key with D-shaped bow.","bibliographicReferences":[],"production":"Carved work of this nature has traditionally been attributed to the workshop of the sculptor César Bagard (1620-1709) in Nancy, Lorraine, who was made court sculptor to Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, in 1669. It is unlikely, however, that he concerned himself with such minor work, although a number of workshops in Nancy did so. The best known of these was the dynasty of carvers descended from César Foulon or Foullon, himself the godfather of César Bagard.  When César Foulon's son Nicolas-François (1628-1698) died, the inventory taken after his death included a large variety of pieces worked in <i>bois de Sainte-Lucie</i> (a form of cherry), including boxes, brushes, powder boxes, frames, crucifixes and tobacco rasps, the standard stock of a <i>sculpteur en petit</i> (carver of small items).","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"scrolling foliage","id":"AAT165387"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["1708:2-1900","1708:1-1900"],"accessionNumberNum":"1708","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1900,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE","Key","Box"],"assets":["2019LN6349","2019LN8313","2019LU3269","2019LW2364","2019LV9045"],"recordModificationDate":"2025-12-08","recordCreationDate":"2003-11-07","availableToBook":true}}