A BOX COLLECTION THAT’S UP TO SNUFF

Arthur Gilbert collects decorative art because few others do.

“I do it because I hate to compete,” the Beverly Hills real-estate developer and investor said. So he started amassing mosaics, sensing that he could create “a collection on a par with some of the best in the world.”

He succeeded.

According to Tim Schroder, curator of decorative arts at the County Museum of Art, Gilbert and his wife Rosalinde’s mosaic collection is “undoubtedly one of the finest in the world.” Their silver collection is “one of the most extensive in the United States.” And the Gilbert gold snuffbox cache, some of which temporarily joins parts of the other two installations permanently on view at the museum, is “one of the most important privately owned collections in the world.”

“Gold Boxes From the Gilbert Collection” (to July 20) glows with the small but sumptuous works of art, some lavishly chased with ornate diamond clusters, others glazed, engraved, enameled or covered with carved, floral hard stones.

The 75 boxes, which held snuff for members of the 17th- to early 19th-Century European aristocracy, include a musical box with a dancing ballerina and one with sailing ships. One glass-enclosed grouping contains miniature paintings made with a single-hair brush. Another displays a circular box covered with tiny tesserae, or minuscule mosaic chips. The latter signaled the start of the Gilberts’ hobby of box collecting.

“It was really an evolution” from mosaics to gold boxes, said Gilbert, looking dapper in tennis clothes. The London-born collector moved here in 1949. Purchasing mosaic boxes to expand their mosaic collection--without an eye for gold boxes per se--the Gilberts bought their first one seven years ago at Garrard’s, the London jeweler.

“Then gradually, or not so gradually, we began buying other boxes. Obviously the thing was to find something different with each box. You know, it’s like Solomon, who had 1,000 wives. I’m sure he was looking for something different with each one.”

Indeed, the Gilberts’ boxes (they have more than 100) come from Switzerland, Paris, Berlin, London, Dresden, East Germany and St. Petersburg, U.S.S.R. Most fashionable with the ubiquitous use of snuff in the 18th Century, the boxes represent a variety of styles, materials, historical periods and techniques. Often a goldsmith, enameler, jeweler and stone carver all worked on a single box.

Those privileged enough to afford the luxury items “would never have only one,” said Schroder, who spent seven years at Christie’s auction house in London before moving here about a year ago. “You would always have many, and the boxes were taken out for show at smart gatherings. It was rather like jewelry or a suit of clothes, you would want to show your taste with the boxes.”

“But I must tell you,” said Gilbert, 72, a museum trustee for the last 10 years, “I don’t know a thing about the boxes. Therefore I realized I had to rely on specialists,” antique dealers or such curators as Schroder for advice on purchases.

Gilbert said the process begins when he selects pieces from an antique dealership catalogue or at the dealerships in New York, London or Paris. “I pick out a box and say I like it.” Then, after his “specialists” check the work for imperfections or date accuracy, they attend the auctions and bid for the item.

Did he ever lose a box to a higher bidder? “If I really want something, I buy it. I don’t care who I’m up against.”

But Gilbert doesn’t have definite plans to acquire more gold boxes just now. He said he’s reached the same goal with his boxes that he has with his collection of mainly 19th-Century Italian mosaics.

“We now know I did something no one else had done,” he said in reference to the mosaics. The County Museum of Art maintains that the collection is rivaled only by that of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.