Ath Before 1750, Fly Box, Vinaigrette , Sterling Silver

Lovely little fly or "water of the Queen of Hungary box"with the hallmarks of the city of Ath and the master goldsmith Jean François de Raismes Père. The annal letter is probably an H and indicates a year before 1749. It is made of solid silver. It is also stamped with a Belgian control mark from the period 1831-68. The Queen of Hungary's water was a perfume made from rosemary, orange blossom and rose water, which had great success in the eighteenth century. According to legend, a hermit offered it to a queen of Hungary, aged 72 at the time. She used the miracle water for a year and, suffering from the ills of old age, she then regained her health, her shape and the beauty of her twenty years. A prodigious story of which we find a written trace: "I Dona Isabelle Queen of Hungary, being seventy-two years old, very infirm and gouty, used the following recipe for a whole year (…) Which had such an effect , that at the same time I healed and recovered my strength, so that appearing beautiful to everyone, the King of Poland wanted to marry me: which I refused." It is then called the Water of the Queen of Hungary or l'eau de la reine de Hongrie .
Historians have recently looked into this legend, wanting to find this queen who gave her name to the perfume. Several queens are then mentioned between 1370 and 1666, without any being able to correspond to the testimony of this 72-year-old queen. The reality would therefore ultimately be less miraculous since it could be the first “marketing coup” in history. The perfumers of Montpellier are said to have invented the story from scratch to arouse the curiosity and desire of their customers and thus introduce the water of the Queen of Hungary to the court of Louis XIV!
Madame de Maintenon, governess of the children of Louis XIV with whom she married in secret after the death of his legitimate wife, made this water her favorite product. She also recommended it to the residents of the royal house of Saint-Cyr to protect them from diseases and epidemics.
Madame de Sévigné is also a very regular user, writing to her daughter Madame de Grignan: "I'm crazy about it, it's the relief of all my sorrows."
Until the end of the 18th century, the reputation of this water with its thousand benefits continued to grow. It is then gradually replaced by another famous water, eau de Cologne. However, it is not completely forgotten.
The goldsmiths of Ath had great difficulty meeting their subsistence needs with orders from local customers. This is why they specialized in the manufacture of what their contemporaries called "menuties", that is to say small silver objects which could be easily exported to other cities in the Austrian Netherlands to be sold there on the annual markets or with merchants. This is why the hallmark of the city of Ath is clearly over-represented on the hands. snuff boxes, fly boxes, shoe buckles and other costume buttons found on the production of Belgian goldsmiths from the eighteenth century.