The Artists - Merry Scotland

As a child, Merry Scotland developed what has become a lifelong interest in animals, particularly horses and dogs, as a subject of art as friends and companions. Early on, Merry began painting, drawing and sculpting these animals which had long been so important in her life. Her earliest works were executed in pen and ink. She quickly progressed to acrylics, starting with head studies and moving on to full figure portraits with landscape backgrounds. Soon interested in several other facets of the visual arts, she began to treat her subject matter in sculpture, starting with clay and leading to limited editions in bronze.

Merry's chief influences as a young artist were Roger Troy Peterson, Bob Abbott, Guy Coheleach and a number of other noted wildlife and animal artists. She has always been primarily interested in the realistic rendering of her subject matter. A career in breeding, training and rearing race horses, jumpers and American Saddlebred show horses enabled Merry to develop a more thorough and discerning understanding of these animals. She has also owned dogs of many breeds, including Labrador retrievers, Dachshunds, Irish Setters, terriers and mixed breeds throughout her life. It is this close association with animals that has enabled Merry to portray them so successfully in her art. Merry's work is included in private collections throughout the world, including those of Oleg Cassini, Alfred Vanderbilt and Burt Reynolds. She has designed jewelry for Gucci.

This box has a charming painting of a West Highland White Terrier dog, inside is a painting of a leash & collar as well as a personalization as this particular box was a custom order.
Merry's porcelain boxes are Limoges porcelain blanks purchased from France on which she paints in the USA out of her studio: Scotland's Yard.

The Designer - Fiona Saunders

In the late 1990's British Artist Fiona Saunders, famous for her art prints featuring elaborate ladies' shoes, was asked to design a series of shoes for Limoges Boxes. The result is a stunning collection embellished with an array of fabric & faux stones. Each design was produced in limited quantities of 300.

Fiona Saunders was born in 1965 in Harrow, England. She was educated in London at St. Martens School of Art and at the Royal College of Art, England's most prestigious post graduate art College. Since then she has worked as an illustrator and graphic designer.

To produce her series of shoes as art, Saunders traveled to historic homes of shoemaking such as Northampton, England where she found an inspiring collection of shoes. She also studied the works of twentieth century masters including Vivier, Blahnik and Ferragamo, paying homage in her work to the many artists and artisans throughout the ages who have inspired her.

The Artists - Francoise Vialard

Françoise Vialard has an outstanding international reputation in the world of porcelain painting.
She was schooled from childhood by her grandmother, a water colorist, and at 14 she began study at an art school in Paris. Her talent for porcelain painting was discovered in this period and it ultimately became her primary focus.
In her studio in the 7th Arrondissement she works alone and designs and paints each piece herself. Her colors are more subtle than most and she achieves a depth of color and glaze that very few others attempt. She fires a piece, in the course of painting, as many as four times in order to achieve the colors that are her ultimate goal. Few ateliers will do this because each firing puts the porcelain at risk but she is willing to risk the destruction of a piece to bring it to the level of perfection that she demands of her own work.
If you study her pieces you will notice the exquisite detailing, the layer upon layer of color to arrive at the depth that her pieces have, the originality of her designs and the strong sense of antiquity that pervades all of her work. Like the miniaturists who painted portraits on porcelain in the 17th and 18th centuries, to Madame Vialard concern for detail is everything.
She is quite innovative in her overall approach to porcelain miniature objects and it was she who first designed a Limoges box with a working timepiece in it as well as being the first to place a music movement into a Limoges box. She was also the artist who revived the fashion of the tiny 'perfume boxes' which were so sought after in the 18th century. Her perfumes boxes are extraordinary today. They are far and away the most imaginative and the most beautiful in the market place.
Madame Vialard's mark is: "Peint Main" in script, her signature "F Vialard, Limoges" in script, France, in print. The mark is black in its entirety.