NAPOLEON III BOXES

Material: Enameled and hand-painted metal

Origin: France, second half of the 19th century

Decorative boxes made of enameled metal in coral and old gold tones with chinoiserie designs, made in France in the Napoleon III style, which embraced the aesthetic ideals of the Old Regime, finding in it an inexhaustible source of inspiration, of which this piece is a paradigmatic example.

The term chinoiserie comes from the French word chinoiserie and refers to a trend in European art that imitates Oriental art. With precedents in the Renaissance, this trend reached its zenith in the Rococo period and is characterized by the use of lacquered materials, plays on scale, excessive ornamentation, and a Eurocentric recreation of a hedonistic and idealized Orient.