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Enamel Menagerie Nᵒ.6: Tiger Boxes

Enamel tiger bonbonnière, c. 1760 (5.8cm diameter).
Sold at Bonham's in 2011 for £4,500. Originally
from the Mort & Moira Lesser collection.

Box 1
This cheeky, grinning tiger is beautifully painted with glowing teeth and slicked-back whiskers in vibrant magenta and white. He is one of several creatures included in the menagerie of eighteenth-century enamels made in Birmingham and Bilston in about the 1760s and 1770s. These were bonbonnières (sweet boxes), which were larger containers to the pill and patch boxes produced at a similar time.

The lid (below) is hinged and simply mounted onto the box, and decorated with a hunting scene, with a pyramid or obelisk behind the tiger, all framed in colourful scrolling. Many boxes depicting large cats included hunting scenes on the lid, perhaps influenced by well-known prints produced 150 years previously by Antonio Tempesta, an Italian painter and engraver (see lion boxes).
Lid of the tiger bonbonnière (above).

Box 2

This tiger bonbonnière (below) is painted in a much simpler manner, so was possibly produced later (c. 1780) for a wider market. Many boxes of the same shape were painted as dog's heads, so this may possibly be a stripy dog, but either way the interchange between different animals shows how the makers of these used the moulded copper bases to produce a variety of designs. This tiger (stripy dog) was sold as a gift from Margate (lid below).
Enamelled tiger bonbonnière, c. 1780, made
in Birmingham or South Staffordshire.
From a private collection.

Lid of above, with 'A Margate Gift' transfer-printed
onto the enamel.


See all of the enamel menagerie: here. Find out more about eighteenth-century enamelling: here.