Rare Set Of Four Tortoiseshell And Silver Nesting Boxes, Yogyakarta, Indonesia,

Rare set of four nestable boxes in extremely fine tortoiseshell, each decorated with a silver medallion in the Yogyakarta style.

Excellent condition except for a crack on the largest box (see photo).

Dimensions of the largest: 7 cm long by 6 cm wide and 3.5 cm high.

Throughout Southeast Asia, at the beginning of the 20th century, the art of silversmithing was disappearing. The local nobility had long been the main source of commissions for silverwork, but the loss of their power to colonizing nations was accompanied by a loss of wealth to finance such products.

Local silversmiths were therefore left without a market for their creations: most of them had turned to other means of subsistence and few were trained in the craft.

In 1930, a Dutch woman, Mary Agnes van Gesseler Verschuir-Pownall, wife of the governor of Djokjakarta (Yogyakarta), in Central Java, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), became interested in reviving the local silver industry in the suburb of Kota Gede.

Her plan was inspired by the one that had succeeded a decade earlier in reviving silver crafts in French Cambodia, where local artisans were trained in their historical aesthetics, in using historical architecture as a source, and encouraged them to use this inspiration in creating silver objects modeled to meet European and Western needs.

Although Agnes left Indonesia at the end of her husband's term in 1933, she left behind a foundation, the PakarjanNgajojiokarta, composed of Dutch enthusiasts and Javanese aristocrats. The foundation successfully continued its work, and the marriage of Javanese aesthetics and Western forms was a resounding success, while the silver trade flourished.

The resulting silverware, often beautiful and exquisitely crafted, was purchased mainly by the local Dutch population and tourists, mainly Americans, and over time became a highly sought-after collector's item. After Indonesia gained independence from the Netherlands in 1949, Yogya silverware continued to flourish until the 1960s.

Being mainly acquired by foreigners, few vintage examples are found in Indonesia.