Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A few remarks concerning makers of Singing Bird boxes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Tiffany and C^o. New York

Singing Bird boxes

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.—

Singing Bird Box
Signed “Jaquet-Droz and Leschot London”
(from an old engraving)
Actually in the collection of M^r Luis Dubois-Favre
Le Loele, Switzerland.