The lid crested with a watch with a faceted garnet finial and surrounded by pale rubies, the works signed Tho. Grant/London/1207, the interior fitted with various instruments, including four glass bottles, scissors, tweezers with a nail file, tablest, a pair of gold pencil holders, two spoons, a bodkin, a hook, and ear pick, and ear cleaner, an eyebrow comb and a mother-of-pearl sponge handle
8 in. (20.3 cm.) high, 5¹⁄₄ in. (13.4 cm.) wide, 4 in. (10.2 cm.) deep

with A La Vieille Russie, New York.

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Lot Essay

James Cox's works made for export to the eighteenth-century courts of Russia, India and China are amongst the most distinctive of the George III period. Cox's workshop is first recorded in 1745 as located on Racquet Court, Fleet Street, from where he moved to Shoe Lane in Farringdon in 1756, having formed a partnership with Edward Grace. In the 1760's, he began to produce extravagant clocks, automata, necessaires and snuff-boxes, which made him fashionable in London circles and popular in the Far East and Russia, see R. Smith, 'James Cox [c. 1723-1800]: a revised biography', Burlington Magazine, vol. CXLII, no. 1167, June 2000, p. 355.