Game box made by a prisoner of war of the Napoleonic Age, about 1796-1815. In pine wood covered in bone engraved with fourteen small inserts in watercolor paper with landscapes, figures and vases of flowers. Interior containing thirty-two dominoes and thirteen small bone tiles of which several painted to depict playing cards. Signed under the base ""Gourmy"" (cm 24x7,5x9,5) (defects, minor defects and broken glass)     Many prisoners of war in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries manufactured handicrafts that sold or traded to buy some small necessities of daily life such as soap, salt, tobacco and medicine. This type of artifact was made using found objects such as pine crates, mutton bones from leftover food, twine or straw.     A similar model is kept in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London with record O349195   For comparison see:   Trusted, Marjorie, Baroque & Later Ivories, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2013, cat. no. 279, p. 283, 4   Longhurst, Margaret H. Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory. Part II. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1929, p. 120   Review [1911-1938], Victoria & Albert Museum. Review of the Principal Acquisitions During the Year, London, 1919, p. 4

Estimate € 600 - 800