GUEST: I don't know much about them. My brother always called them snuff boxes, but I think they're too pretty for a snuff box.
APPRAISER: They're very pretty.
GUEST: And that's about all I know. I inherited them from him.
APPRAISER: And do you have any idea where he may have acquired these from?
GUEST: I believe he bought those from somebody who needed money.
APPRAISER: I see. The interesting part to me was that these are enamel, and so enamel is basically glass that has been powdered and then fused to a base metal. And these here, the two in the front, these have a type of enamel called guilloché. When you move them, it almost looks like silk, the way light will go across silk, and that was the effect that they were trying to give with this enameling. What it is is they engrave the surface of the piece, and then they enamel it, and because there's different levels of enamel, it creates darkness and lightness in this enameling. Both these boxes are related. They are snuff boxes. I'm going to open them up here. And both of them have the same hallmarks inside. So there are these marks in the base of the box here, and so these indicate to me that these are Austrian. And based on the style and the motif, I would date these snuff boxes around 1800, 1820. They are gold. There's also another series of marks on this particular box, which are right here, which tell me that they were imported into France at one point in time, so they also have French import marks. And so they're both lovely, lovely examples of enameling from that time period, and they're highly collectible; people love to collect these types of items. The other box that you have here, although this is not a snuff box, it's actually a little jewel box, and it has an enamel portrait of Napoleon. This is a more modern piece.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So in today's market at auction, if these were going to come up for auction, I would imagine that these would have a presale estimate of between $2,500 and $3,500 apiece.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This piece, not quite so much. Probably somewhere around $100 to $150, because it truly is more decorative.
