Cigarette Case Fired Enamel with Still Life Miniature Sterling Silver Salimbeni

Rectangular pocket cigarette case with two rounded long sides, with translucent fired enamel on guilloché top and bottom, with a lost, i.e. semi-invisible, hinge, opening with a spri...

6238-7239- Pocket cigarette case with spring button in 925/1000 fire-enamelled sterling silver with beautiful vessel miniature hand-painted by th...

Rectangular, “olive” shaped cigarette case for handbag, in 925/1000 sterling silver with fine hand-engravings fire enamelled and translucent fired enamel on guilloché, Art Deco style...

Square box in 925/1000 sterling silver gold plated with translucent fired enamel on guillochè also on the sides. In the center, a beautiful hand painted tempera miniature on a vegetable ivory plate depicting the portrait of a 19th century lady, signed by the painter Anna Maria Manfriani. Dimensions cm. 12 x 12 x 2.5. Weight gr. 618. Designed by Franco Salimbeni in 1976 and manufactured in Florence in some specimens with various subjects and different colors, in the headquarters of the Salimbeni Company with completely manual execution by artisan artists with thick slab and large reinforcements suitable for withstanding numerous enamelled firings at about 800° C. Miniature is a very ancient technique which consists of painting works in small proportions. It was born for the decoration of the first letter of the paragraph of the books. Over the years, however, this technique is refined and enriched, then moving on to precious personal items. Hand painted miniatures can be done with multiple different techniques. The most important that we use on our articles are of three kinds: 1) Fire enamel. 2) Water tempera on an ivory plate. 3) Painted on mother-of-pearl. Fire enameled miniatures: On a first layer of enamel generally white or very clear or even transparent suitably liquefied at a temperature of about 750 ° C, the chosen subject is painted using miniature colors which are as many colored crystals, ground and reduced to a very fine, almost impalpable powder washed and purified in distilled water with the addition of small quantities of deoxidizing acids which, diluted with essential oils (usually essential oil of solder), can be mixed to form a palette of colors. With very fine sable hair brushes you draw the subject starting from the perimeter and then gradually adding various layers of color. It is necessary to carry out various firings very often so that the colors harden and are not absorbed by the underlying glaze as, during the subsequent firings at 750 ° C, during liquefaction, it would spread irremediably. Hence the need to form the painting a little at a time, cooking it numerous times. Therefore it is necessary to proceed with numerous retouching, often overlapping different colors that only the painter's experience knows. A beautiful miniature needs from 20 to over 50 firings and is finished when the painter deems he does not have to further intervene. Some colors must have darker tones than others because then, by superimposing the transparent enamel placed at the end of the miniature, they fade. This transparent layer, called “fondant” in jargon, must be smoothed and polished like all other translucent enamel colors. The miniatures with water tempera colors are painted on real ivory...

Hand-painted pink roses in bloom dominate the lid of this German 900-grade silver cigarette case, executed in polychrome over an icy mint guilloché ground. The translucent enamel rev...

A fine vintage Continental silver & enamel box. In .800 silver with a gilt interior. With an enamel trompe l'oeil 'malachite cabochon' to the center, 4 enamel trompe l'oeil 'ha...

A fine antique German Art Deco period silver & enamel snuff box. Attributed to the workshops of Louis Kuppenheim in Pforzheim, Germany. In sterling silver. With a red enamel grou...

An Austrian silver and guilloché enamel box, made in Vienna in the 1930s. The box is rectangular in shape and decorated on the lid with...