Mother-of-Pearl Jewelry Boxes

This is a Moorish-style jewelry box adorned with inlaid marquetry work, featuring a mosaic of geometric and floral patterns. The design is highly detailed, with small pieces of wood,...

Vintage jewelry box in faux tessellated tortoise shell with mother-of-pearl and Abolone shell edge, circa 1970s. Simple, elegant and unique. Bin #N Jj

A superb antique Victorian English rosewood jewellery box with fitted interior, a removable inner jewellery tray, and fully working lock and key, circa 1850. The lid and front of thi...

exquisite middle Eastern Moorish Syrian inlay jewelry box. This box is intricately inlaid with Moorish motif designs which have been uniquely inlaid with bone, mother of pearl and f...

PRESENTING a LOVELY 19C Anglo Indian Bombay MOP (Mother of Pearl) Sadeli Mosaic Trinket Box from circa 1875-85. Gorgeously detailed and hand-crafted ‘sadeli mosaic’ inlay, from the Bombay Area, with deep greens with silver, pewter, mother of pearl, bone and ebony in geometric patterns. The box case, is made of sandalwood but completely covered in MOP, bone, faux ivory, ebony and mosaic inlay. Edged with faux ivory and banded with a different pattern of sadeli mosaic. Some minor damage to the top (repair is obvious in pics) and ivorine replacements to some edging, but it still a BEAUTIFUL BOX and of real QUALITY! The mosaic work is FABULOUS! Box opens to reveal its original blue velvet lining. It sits on 4 (recently added) silvered button feet. SADELI MOSAIC: “Anglo Indian boxes were made in India for the English residents from the early part of the 18th century. They were brought back or sent back to England usually by the people who had commissioned them. From the beginning of the nineteenth century they were imported more commercially, although not in any significant numbers until the middle decades. They were very highly valued, especially the early ones, to the extent that the designs were copied on late 19th and early 20th century tins. The ancient art of Sadeli Mosaic is said to have been introduced from Shiraz in Persia via Sind to Bombay, a long time before the Anglo Indian boxes were made. It was a technique, which required a high degree of skill and patience. It was executed very lavishly, in that the frequent cuts wasted a great amount of the precious materials used. The workmanship was however more than commensurable to the value of the materials. Ivory, silver, pewter (or other metals), wood and horn were cut into faceted rods which were bound together to form geometric patterns. When the glue has set, the rods were sliced in transverse sections. This gave the maker a number of angled circular pieces in the original pattern. Several variations of patterns could be achieved by combining the materials in different ways. The ivory was sometimes dyed green to give an extra color. The mosaic pieces in a combination of patterns, often separated by ivory, ebony, horn or silver stringing were used to veneer sandalwood boxes. In the early boxes, which date from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, there are large panels of mosaic covering tops and sides of boxes. It took incredible skill to cover such large areas without any shakes or wavering of the pattern. The corners and joins on these boxes are impeccably matched. The makers (reputed to be Persian) of Sadeli mosaic made in the first two decades of the 19th century displayed a total understanding of the qualities of the different materials they used. They combined substances, which can expand and contract according to atmospheric conditions with others, which are hard and unyielding. The result was a sharp definition of the lines and patterns, which made up the whole design. On the early boxes the designs look deceptively simple. The fact is, they emerged from a culture, which had mastered geometry and understood how to generate a pattern from a set number of points. The patterns are so harmoniously combined that their incredible complexity is not immediately apparent. The earliest Sadeli boxes...

This precious 19th century English table casket features mother of pearl inlay and carved shell drawer pulls. The top of the piece is decorated with a pai...

This is an vintage decorative jewellery case. A Japanese, lacquer and Mother of Pearl lidded box in Art Deco taste, dating to the early 20th century, circa 1930. Appealing example o...

Vintage Chinese jewelry box, jewelry box with drawers and doors, black lacquered wood inlaid with mother of pearl and finished with brass...

Decorative 20th century Art Nouveau walnut jewellery box from the early period in Austria around 1910. A gorgeous looking solid wooden box with a fantastic grain. The original interi...

1950s Black Lacquered Wood and Mother Of Pearl Inlayed Small Dressing Box Two Felt Lined Drawers Mirror on underside of lid Small knick on top

Antique Japanese Mother of Pearl inlaid jewelry box w lap desk This item includes restricted materials and can not be sold outside of the contiguous United States. Additional i...

An exceptional Indo-Portuguese colonial mother-of-pearl veneered casket with silver mounts India, Gujarat, 2nd half of the 16th century, the silver mounts Goa or probably Lisbon Measures: H. 16 x W. 24.6 x D. 16.1 cm An exceptional Gujarati casket with a rectangular box and truncated pyramidal lid (with slopes on each side and a flat top) made from exotic wood, probably teak (Tectona grandis), covered with a mother-of-pearl mosaic. The tesserae, cut from the shell of the green turban sea snail (Turbo marmoratus, a marine gastropod) in the shape of fish scales, are pinned to the wooden structure with silver ball-headed nails. The casket is set on bracket feet on the corners. The masterfully engraved decoration of the silver mounts follows the most refined and erudite Mannerist repertoire of rinceaux and ferroneries dating from the mid-16th century. The high quality and refinement of the silver mounts and, likewise, the silver nails that replaced the original brass pins used to hold the mother-of-pearl tesserae in place indicate the work of a silversmith probably working in Lisbon in the second half of the 16th century. The Indian origin of this production, namely from Cambay (Khambhat) and Surat in the present state of Gujarat in north India, is, as for the last three decades, consensual and fully demonstrated, not only by documentary and literary evidence - such as descriptions, travelogues and contemporary archival documentation - but also by the survival in situ of 16th-century wooden structures covered in mother-of-pearl tesserae. A fine example is a canopy decorating the tomb (dargah) of the Sufi saint, Sheik Salim Chisti (1478-1572) in Fatehpur Sikri in Agra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India. This is an artistic production, geometric in character and Islamic in nature, where usually the mother-of-pearl tesserae form complex designs of fish scales or, similar to the dishes also made using the same technique, with the thin brass sheets and pins, stylized lotus flowers. The truncated pyramidal shape corresponds, like their contemporary tortoiseshell counterparts also made in Gujarat, to a piece of furniture used in the Indian subcontinent within the Islamic world prior to the arrival of the first Portuguese. This shape, in fact, is very old and peculiar to East-Asian caskets, chests or boxes used to contain and protect Buddhist texts, the sutras. A similar chest is the famous and large reliquary chest from Lisbon cathedral that once contained the relics of the city's patron saint, Saint Vincent. Both match in shape, having the same kind of socle or pedestal and bracket feet, and in their engraved silver mountings, featuring the same type of refined, erudite decoration. Their differences lie in the silver borders that frame the entire length of the edges of the chest (both the box and the lid), pinned with silver nails, and on the lock plate, shaped like a coat of arms in the Lisbon example. Given the exceptional dimensions of the reliquary casket...

PRESENTING A STUNNING little French Ring Box from the 18th Century, namely a French Louis XVI Brass and MOP Box with Miniature Portrait of Lady. Box inlaid wi...

Long ago, this elegant rosewood box was used by a Qing-dynasty lady to store her favorite pieces of jewelry, each drawer filled with jades, pearls, coral necklaces, and hair pins. Th...

A ‘Palais Royal’ miniature horse-drawn carriage trinket box made with mother of pearl, silver-plated horses and gold plated metal. 19th century.

Dimensions - H: 1 3/4in W: 3 1/2in D: 2in This Mid 18th Century Porcelain and Bronze Box by Meissen is truly a spectacular piece and is of the highest quality! If you look at the p...

Mahogany box with inlaid mother of pearl and mirror, on small round brass feet.

English walnut and brass dome-top box with Mother-of-Pearl, ca. 1860. With 6 sewing tools, 4 have mother of pearl handles, 7 pieces of circular fabric sam...

A fine large marquetry jewelry box : amaranth veneer with brass and mother of pearl inlays ; the inside is upholstered with silk, Napoleon III Parisian production, mid 19th century c...

A wonderful English coromandel travel case, or necessaire de voyage, boasts toiletries adorned with Victorian silver, cut crystal, and mother-of-p...

This beautiful, antique jewelry box set was crafted in France, circa 1870. The box has a mother of pearl crest on the top and front, and reveals several dividers inside while the com...

An Indonesian Peranakan mother-of-pearl inlaid mastic sirih casket with silver mounts Jakarta (Batavia), circa 1720-1730, the silver hinges marked for Batavia, maker’s mark HS or SH...

Small, oval Charles X box in mother-of-pearl and gilded bronze with a flower-shaped key. The lid has a white nacre plate and is decorated with a central medallion that displays color...

A fine, early and very unusual Palais Royal Cupid and Harp musical box with two-air cylinder movement. The finely modelled cupid sits upon an Empire stool and plays a classical 16 s...

Pair of Charles X ring holders (baguiers) with ormolu mounts embellished with small flowers. A high backing of mother-of-pearl joins a small, ormolu bowl featuring openwork interlaci...

Gilt bronze and mother-of-pearl shell shaped box, Palais Royale, circa 1810.

Papier mâché circa 1870 English inlaid lacquered sewing box/jewelry box, with many Velvet and mother-of-pearl compartments, hidden area in center. Hand-carved mother-of-pearl, inlaid...

A fine Japanese export red lacquer box with Masonic symbols Kyoto/Nagasaki, 1800-1820 Red lacquer decorated with scattered flowers and flying birds with long tails in gold, wit...

Delicate rectangular mother of pearl box engraved with garlands of leaves. The box is mounted in gilt bronze and intricately sculpted with interlacing, garlands and baskets of flower...

A very good quality and unusual Palais Royal gilt bronze and mother of pearl jewellery casket or trinket box dating from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The box is in gilded bronze with a repoussé allegorical cartouches of a man courting a woman, very much in the Watteau or Fragonard style. There are two enamel bands surrounding the central cartouche, one in white , the other in blue. The round shaped cartouche is set in a square mother of pearl plaque...

Sizeable rectangular, wooden coffer with its key. The blackened wood is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and brass. The lid and the main face of the box are r...