№ 782

Leather box with four ivory boxes to hold counters for a card game, signed “Mariaul le Jeune a Paris. Fecit”.

Similar sets of boxes are held by museums like the Victoria & Alber Museum in London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. Such boxes were made in sets of four to hold counters for a card game like quadrille which was were popular throughout Europe in the 18th century. This set was made and signed in the workshop of Mariaval le Jeune (Mariaval the Younger). He seems to have made a speciality of such boxes. The maker could be Claude-François Mariaval who was engraver to the king (graveur du roi) or more likely, it was his son who made them. A Jean-Prosper Mariaval was active c. 1759 as a cartographer.
France, 1690-1750