A painted and lacquered letter case, with maritime decoration

[France, late 18th or early 19th century]. Two-part cylindrical case (125 mm. long, diameter 21 mm.), in a light, lacquered wood, the central compartment lined with a tortoiseshell tube which is inserted into upper compartment, flattish ends, both compartments relined with cork, incised gilt metal bands at each juncture; the cases painted with sailboats on a windy sea viewed from the shore with trees, on a bright emerald green ground, small roses painted on each end. Fine condition (a couple of small dents in the gold bands).***

A brightly painted and lacquered tubular case for love letters. Tubes for billets doux were common objects of 18th- and 19th-century France: they were intended as discreet vehicles for possibly compromising correspondence. While some “étuis à message” contained tiny smelling salts bottles that fit in the upper compartment, this one does not have an insert for that additional feature.

In the 18th century both large decorative objects and trinkets such as cosmetic cases, snuff boxes, and, occasionally, small bookbindings, were often painted using one of several faux lacquer methods. Loosely known as “vernis Martin,” after the four brothers Martin, vernisseurs du roi active from ca. 1730 to 1770, who specialized in such work, the term in fact covers several different techniques and formulas. Such “false” lacquers imitated Chinese and Japanese wares, but their “basic ingredient was usually copal varnish, not the true Rhus vernicifera used in Oriental lacquer” (Osborne, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts [1988], p. 811).