- Collection: Four original French notarial archive/document boxes
- Country of origin: France
- Period: 19th century
- Dates: 1845, 1850, 1857 & 1882
- Notaire: Three gilt-titled “Mᵉ GOYON – NOTAIRE”; 1882 example bears a different, partially worn notaire's name
- Materials: Heavy board, leather spines, gilt tooling and lettering, decorative marbled paper
- Original details: Remnants of ribbon closures; one box retains a brass ring pull
- Maker/Supplier: The 1850 box retains an original trade label for Imprimerie Onfroy-Ranchard, Évreux
- Approximate size: 27 cm high × 20 cm wide × 15 cm deep each
- Condition: Original antique condition with considerable age-related wear, rubbing, losses and marks to leather, paper and edges; worn and mellowed gilding; ribbon closures incomplete. Please refer closely to photographs.
- Contents: Empty
- Quantity: Four
- Sale: Sold together as one collection
A wonderfully atmospheric collection of four large 19th-century French notarial archive boxes, dating from 1845 to 1882, with beautifully aged leather spines, original gilt-tooled decoration and lettering, richly coloured marbled papers and surviving remnants of their original ribbon closures.
Created for use in French notarial offices, these substantial document boxes were designed to sit on library shelving alongside the great leather-bound legal folios and registers of the period. Their leather spines were individually decorated and titled in gold with the name of the notaire, the relevant semester and year.
Three of the collection are gilt-titled “Mᵉ GOYON – NOTAIRE” and dated 1845, 1850 and 1857, giving us a fascinating twelve-year sequence from the same 19th-century notarial office.
The fourth example dates to 1882 and carries the gilt name of another notaire, now partially obscured by more than 140 years of wear. This particularly characterful box also retains a brass ring pull, adding another wonderful decorative detail to the collection.
The 1850 Goyon box retains its original pink trade label for Imprimerie Onfroy-Ranchard of Évreux, providing a rare surviving connection to the 19th-century printer and stationer that supplied the box.
The sides and bodies are covered with wonderful marbled papers, their colours now softly faded and worn with age. Remnants of the original ribbon ties and closures also survive, providing lovely evidence of how these boxes were originally secured and used.
What makes this collection particularly special is the combination of leather, gold tooling, marbled paper, typography and genuine patina. When the four are displayed together, their enormous gilt-lettered spines have all the visual presence of a collection of ancient French folio volumes.
These are not modern decorative faux books. They are genuine 19th-century working archive boxes, and their wear is an integral part of their appeal. The leather is rubbed and distressed, gilding has mellowed and disappeared in places, papers have marks and losses, and the ribbon closures are fragmentary. We have deliberately left them unrestored, preserving the wonderfully authentic character accumulated through generations of use.
Today they make an exceptional decorative collection for a library, study, home office or country-house interior. They would look magnificent displayed amongst antique books, paintings, bronzes and objects of curiosity, or incorporated into a beautifully layered bookshelf or library scheme.
Their scale and unmistakably French character would equally suit an interior designer, boutique hotel, private members' club, restaurant, film or television production looking for genuine period atmosphere.
A wonderfully evocative survival from the world of the 19th-century French notaire — and an increasingly difficult type of decorative antique to find as a collection.
Sold as a collection of four.