Accessories

Antique pocket and desk accessories form a category in their own right within European decorative arts, produced between the mid-eighteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Pyrogenes and Vesta cases were used to protect sulphur matches, cigarette and cigar cases to preserve tobacco from moisture, and pill boxes to conceal medicines and remedies in a waistcoat pocket. These everyday objects served precise purposes, yet their manufacture belonged to the applied arts: the great silversmithing houses of London, Vienna and Paris — Asprey, Fabergé, Cartier, or the cutlery workshops of Sheffield and Thiers — devoted to them a level of craftsmanship equal to that of their finest jewellery pieces.

The materials used reflect the social hierarchy of their time: hallmarked sterling silver, vermeil, coloured gold, tortoiseshell, ivory, mother-of-pearl, champlevé or cloisonné enamel, sometimes combined on a single piece. English productions of the Victorian and Edwardian periods are distinguished by their technical rigour and explicit hallmarks — date letter, maker's mark, assay office — which allow for precise dating. Austro-Hungarian and Russian workshops, by contrast, favoured decorative profusion and polychrome enamels.

For the discerning collector, several criteria determine a piece's value: the legibility and completeness of the hallmarks, the condition of the mechanisms — hinges, latches, springs —, the absence of crude repair soldering, and the coherence between the quality of execution and the purported origin. A period monogram, far from diminishing the object's worth, often attests to its age and authentic use.