Giltwood Footed Jewellery Casket with Ballet Studio Scene and White Filigree Trim, Red Velvet Interior, Original L Gambor “Twinkle Toes” Label, Japan, After 1952

The Piece

A small gilt casket on four shaped legs, with a ballet studio on the lid and its original paper label still on the underside.

The box is wood, finished in warm gold with the brush strokes left visible in the gilding, and it stands clear of the surface on four cabriole legs that sweep out at the foot.

The lid carries a printed scene of a ballet rehearsal: a woman in a rose gown at a harp, a ballerina in a pale blue tutu on point beside a grand piano, an accompanist at the keyboard, and two small girls in blue watching from the doorway.

Around the scene, and again around the lid edge and down the front of every leg, runs an applied openwork filigree trim finished in white over the gold, so the ornament reads as lace against the gilt.

Lift the lid and the whole interior is lined in deep red velvet — base, walls and the underside of the lid — with a raised divider across the floor making two compartments. The lid swings on two small brass hinges.

The underside is flat, plain gilt, and carries a printed paper label: L GAMBOR, Twinkle Toes in script, MADE IN JAPAN.

History & Provenance

That label does two things at once. It dates the box and it names it.

From 1947 to 1952, goods exported from Japan under Allied occupation were required to be marked Occupied Japan or Made in Occupied Japan. The occupation ended on 28 April 1952 and the wording reverted to a plain Made in Japan. This label reads Made in Japan with no occupation wording, so the box was exported after April 1952.

Twinkle Toes is the name of the model rather than a description — the title given to this particular lid scene by whoever commissioned it. L Gambor appears as the importer or decorator. The name has not been matched to a recorded firm, and the box is offered unattributed beyond what the label itself states.

The form is Florentine, and the fact that it was made in Japan is the interesting part. Gilded and painted wooden caskets on cabriole legs, trimmed in applied filigree, were an Italian speciality — Florence produced them for the tourist and gift trade for generations. After the war, Japanese workshops took up the same idiom for the American export market and produced it at volume: the same gilt, the same legs, the same lace trim, made six thousand miles from Florence and sold in American department stores and gift shops.

The decoration is a printed scene rather than a painting, and the object says so under magnification. That is how these lids were done, and it is why the drawing is finer than any hand could manage at this scale. The work that is by hand is everything around it — the gilding, the applied filigree, the white finishing over the gold, the velvet lining and the fitting of the divider.

There is no musical movement. The underside is flat and unbroken, with no winding key, no keyhole and no access panel, and the interior is lined throughout with no compartment for a mechanism. Many boxes of this type were fitted as music boxes; this one was made as a plain jewellery casket.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A box that stands on legs is a different object from a box that sits flat.

Four inches of clearance turns it from storage into furniture — a miniature commode on a dressing table or a nightstand, with a shadow underneath it and a silhouette that reads from across the room. It is the single reason these were made this way, and it still works.

The gold is the useful kind. Rubbed, warm and slightly uneven rather than bright and even, it sits comfortably with old mirror glass, brass, painted wood and worn leather in a way that new gilt never manages.

Open it and the red is a genuine shock. Deep velvet against warm gold is a pairing nobody uses any more, and it makes the inside of the box an event rather than a lining — the reason to open it in front of somebody.

It holds what it was built to hold. Two compartments take rings, earrings, a watch, cufflinks, a pair of studs; the velvet keeps them from sliding and from scratching.

The lid scene earns its place for a specific buyer. Anyone who danced, whose daughter dances, or who teaches will read that rehearsal room immediately — the harp, the accompanist at the piano, the small girls in the doorway waiting their turn. As a gift for a dancer it is considerably better than anything currently made.

And it does not have to hold jewellery. On a desk it takes stamps, keys and paper clips; on a hall table it takes the things that come out of pockets; on a shelf it simply stands there being a small gilt building on legs.

A note on care. Keep it dry and do not wipe the gilding with anything damp. Gilt over wood lifts under moisture and will not go back.

Dust it with a soft dry brush rather than a cloth. The filigree trim is openwork and a cloth catches in it; a brush goes through it.

Leave the label alone. It is the only documentation the box has, and cleaning around it is how these get lost.

Lift it by the body rather than the lid, and keep it out of direct sun, which fades red velvet faster than almost any other textile.