Toilet Box With Domed Lid Made Of Cardboard And Wallpaper, Toulouse, Early 19th Century

A box with a domed lid, made of wallpaper mounted on a cardboard core, Toulouse, c. 1820. In good overall condition considering the extreme fragility of this type of object. As best documented in photographs, there are some losses, dents, peeling, stains, and loose edges. It boasts a rich ornamental repertoire in the neoclassical style characteristic of the period: grotesque phytomorphic figures, urns, birds, vegetal scrolls, and friezes of posts and dentils. The rich and vibrant polychromy betrays the object's southern origin, with its bold and cheerful tones. It is undoubtedly a toilet box, made by the Delhom firm in Toulouse, located on rue du Collège Royal, the former name of the present-day rue Lakanal, not far from the Jacobins convent. This information (as well as the various products of the house) is listed on the surviving label inside. The street was thus named at the end of the 18th century and from 1815 to 1848, due to political changes. The wallpaper museum in Rixheim holds a similar example, dated to the 1820s: all these valuable clues allow us to date this object to around the first two decades of the 19th century, and we are once again dealing with a (provincial) expression of a very sensitive Neoclassicism, indebted to the taste of the late 18th century and its predilection for paper goods (domino paper, for example).