Jean-George Rémond (1752-1830) was the son of a Protestant goldsmith from Hanau, a major center for the production of jewelry, clocks and enamel-painted snuff-boxes, and the home of many Huguenot French jeweler and watchmaking families. He first travelled across Europe working as a journeyman in Paris, Berlin and London in the best European goldsmiths and automaton makers' workshops. He finally settled in Geneva where he was officially admitted as a goldsmith and jeweler in 1783, founding a company called "Georges Rémond & Cie”. Over the following years he used different hallmarks: "GRC" under a foliate crown, "GRC" under a crown, "IGR & C" and formed various partnerships with Joseph Guidon, David Gide, Laurent Guisseling, Jean-Noël Lamy, Denis Blondet, Pierre Mercier and Daniel Burton.
Rémond produced a number of extremely luxurious snuff-boxes with singing birds and pearl decorations, partly for the Chinese market, fond of this type of precise and highly entertaining mechanism.
Geneva was at the crossroads of the important trade routes at a time when there were few accessible ways of crossing the Alps and so was visited by many foreign tourists and traders, particularly from China, Turkey and India attracted by the high quality of Swiss watchmakers.
Boxes with musical and watch movements proved a success with this foreign clientele and prompted the Swiss craftsmen to create novelty pieces such as animal, flower or fruit shaped musical boxes set with watches enameled in strongly contrasting colors, sometimes with seed-pearl borders or overlaid with diamonds which found favor with the mid and far eastern markets.
The firm Piguet et Meyland was formed by Isaac-Daniel Piguet and Philippe Samuel Meylan in 1811.
Isaac Daniel Piguet (1775-1841) was born in Le Chenit in the Valley of Joux in 1775 and specialised in the manufacturing of expensive and complicated pieces; he was the first to create in 1802 a miniature musical piece in the form of a ring following the idea of Geneva watchmaker Antoine Favre (1767-1828) in 1796. Meanwhile Philippe-Samuel Meylan (1772-1845), a member of a family of renowned watchmakers, was born in Le Brassus. He specialised in the production of very thin watches and became an eminent maker of watches with musical automata.
In 1811, they founded Piguet & Meylan and together they produced elaborate and beautifully decorated musical watches, including skeleton and automaton watches, and mechanical animals.
In 1828, the partnership ended and Isaac and his son David-Auguste Piguet established a new company, Piguet Père & Fils. In 1832 the company was dissolved and the commercial part was taken over by Charles Philippe Piguet de Morges while the technical part continued under Piguet & Cie directed by David Auguste. Isaac-Daniel Piguet died in Geneva, on January 20, 1841.
A similarly shaped snuff-box is illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, London, Faber & Faber, 1966, black & white pl. before p. 113, ill. 749 (Collection Wartski, London) and Christie's sold another in Rothschild Masterpieces, 13 October 2023, lot 306. For a near identical musical box see Sotheby's, New York, 27 October 2010, lot 46.
A similar musical box with watch was sold at Antiquorum, Geneva, 19 October 2002, lot 133.
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