˜ A PAIR OF GOLD-MOUNTED TORTOISESHELL BOXES, PROBABLY DUTCH COLONIAL 18TH / 19TH CENTURY oval, the lids with pinned rim mounts, the sides each with plain vertical straps and heart-shaped escutcheons, each with gilt lock and gold escutcheon and hinge with rayed head pins, the interiors fitted with an arrangement of removeable boxes and covers with gilt button handles, 23cm long The manufacture of tortoiseshell boxes became an important industry by the mid 19th century in the formerly Dutch held Galle district of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the boxes apparently made from tortoiseshell imported from the Straits of Malacca, although tortoiseshell betel boxes had also been produced in number in another Dutch colony, Java. See a similar box offered at Chiswick Auctions, London, 12 July 2023, lot 508 and another held by the Victoria & Albert Museum (No. IM.322:1, 2-1924); the latter box also illustrated and discussed by Amin Jaffer on p.383 of his ‘Furniture from British India and Ceylon: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum’ (Timeless Books, 2001).