Gold & gilt metal mounted green shagreen nécessaire, Mid-18th century

A Gold and gilt metal mounted green shagreen nécessaire.
English, Mid-18th century.

The box measures: 41cm x 30.2cm x 12cm.

The case measures: 43cm x 42cm x 13cm.

The nécessaire is studded to the outside with gold pique floral decoration and mounted with gilt metal foliate bale handles and a pierced escutcheon in the Rococo taste. Later lined in red plush velvet, it features a Victorian ‘Patent S Mordan & Co.’ brass lock. Accompanied by a later, leather foul-weather travelling case, embossed with ‘THE R(igh)t HON(oura)ble, THE EARL OF HOME, 6 GROSVENOR SQ(ua)re, LONDON’ and bearing traces of original red wax seals.

Provenance: 11th or 12th Earl of Home.

Cospatrick Douglas-Home, 11th Earl of Home, and Charles Douglas-Home, 12th Earl of Home, both lived at 6 Grosvenor Square, London—the former from 1861 to 1881 and the latter from 1881 to 1903.

For a comparable mid-18th-century English green-stained shagreen nécessaire with original fittings, see the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Acc. No. 64.304.6a–aa.