This highly important tea chest is the earliest and most elaborately ornamented Dutch silver example we know of. In creating this magnificent piece in 1730, the maker, François Lambregts, made a very impressive tea chest for the client who commissioned it. It is the only known tea chest made entirely of silver in the first half of the eighteenth-century. Inside the chest itself are four tea caddies that are also made entirely of silver. The chest has chamfered corners and is decorated with cast and applied ornaments of friezes and fleur-de-lis motifs along the base. The walls of the chest have openwork all round in a symmetrical pattern in Louis XIV style. The chest has a hinged handle.