A Few Remarks Concerning Makers of Singing Bird Boxes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Georges Constantin Pélissier
9781465652898
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The invention of these marvellous pieces of mechanism dates from about the middle of the eighteenth century. When they first appeared they were so highly praised that they were immediately bought by the principal Courts of Europe, and it is only later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that the very high class of people could acquire the rare specimen that came now and then on the market.—The characteristic of the antique singing bird snuff boxes, is that the bird, when singing and moving its wings, opens its beak, when turning the head. It is unfortunate to say, that modern watchmakers have not acquired the skilfulness of their predecessors, and that in modern boxes this triple movement can no more be obtained. This is, as a matter of fact, one of the first means of distinguishing an antique bird box, from a modern one.
