Lot 186

Jean George Rémond & Co. / Rémond, Lamy, Mercier & Co.

The Holy Family

An exquisite Geneva gold enamel snuff box - The Holy Family

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The hinged lid of the square box with chamfered corners is decorated with an octagonal enamel plaque in a frame of split pearls showing an exquisitely painted colourful miniature of The Holy Family. Sides and floor are ornamented with geometric guilloche pattern and translucent light and cobalt blue and opaque black enamel. The floor panel is framed by a gold border of engraved leaf tendrils; the chamfered corners are adorned with gold white and blue Champlevè ornaments on black ground.

Jean-George Rémond (1752-1830) was a jeweller, goldsmith and founder of the company "Jean-Georges Rémond & Company". Rémond was born in Hanau and came from a Huguenot family.
Jean-Georges Remond was trained in his home town. He later perfected his skills in Paris, Berlin and London. His works were in great demand and soon Jean-Georges belonged to an elite group of European artists.
At the age of thirty-one, Jean-Georges Remond moved to Geneva and registered as a "jeweller from Hanau" on 18 June 1783. He founded the company "Georges Rémond & Cie" and registered his first hallmark. In the following years he used various hallmarks: "GRC" under a crown with branches, "GRC" under a crown, "IGR & C" and "IGRC". He made snuff boxes with movements by Jacquet-Droz, Leschot and Piguet & Meylan and decorated them with miniature paintings by Jean-Louis Richter and Jean-Abraham Lissignol. Due to the splendour of the decoration and the superior artistry, his works always aroused admiration.
Little is known about the personal life of Jean-Georges Rémond: He married in 1784 and had two daughters. The older of the two was married to Jacques Charles Colin, Rémond's partner in the company "Charles Colins Söhne" in Hanau, which specialised in the manufacture of snuff boxes.
In 1792, Jean-Georges Rémond's partners - Joseph Guidon, David Gide, Laurent Guisseling and Jean-Noël Lamy - began working unofficially as "Guidon Remond Gide & Co". They marked their products with the hallmark "GRG". The company was officially registered on 1 January 1796. In the years 1800-1801, the company "Rémond Gide & Co" manufactured singing bird boxes for the Chinese market.
Denis Blondet joined forces with Joseph Guidon and David Gide and in January 1801 a new company was founded: "Rémond Lamy & Co", they used the hallmark "RL & C". Soon the name of the company was changed to "Jean Georges Rémond et Compagnie" with headquarters in Geneva and Hanau. The partners were now Jean-Georges Rémond, Jean-Noël Lamy and Jean Boehm, Denis Blonde, Laurent Gusseting and Daniel Burton. In 1811 another company was founded by Jean-Georges Rémond, Jean-Noël Lamy, Laurent Gisseling, Pierre Mercier and Daniel Burton under the name "Remond Lamy Mercier & Co". The hallmark in the form of a horizontal diamond was officially registered in Geneva in 1806 by Napoleonic decree and used until 1811.
The conquest of Geneva by Napoleonic troops in 1798, the authorities' efforts to introduce the French system for identifying gold and silver objects, and the complicated trade situation in Europe during the Napoleonic wars influenced jewellery production in Geneva. The jewellers resisted the innovations until December 1806, when their resistance was broken by Napoleon's official decree. In 1814, many French jewellers left Geneva and a new identification procedure was introduced, the new municipal hallmark, the letter "G".
The firm of Jean-Georges Rémonds was very successful and known across many borders. The company sold its goods in Germany, Russia, Turkey, India and China. Today, many works are in important state and private collections.