unsigned, ’Made in France’ to the interior, the off-white enamelled lid with blank brass nameplate, printed numerals and letters in red and black, with engine-turned back, the interior with bevelled mirror and powder sifter, 8.5cm, 3 1/4in diam

The design of this compact in 1935 marks the first collaboration between Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali. That same year saw the opening of Maison Schiaparelli at 21, Place Vendôme, Paris. An identical example (with red numbers, and black letters) held in the Schiaparelli archive remarks,: ’Dali stated in his memoirs that the Paris of the 1930s was marked ’’not by the debates of the surrealists in the café in Place Blanche, or by the suicide of my great friend René Crevel, but by the fashion house that Elsa Schiaparelli was to open in Place Vendôme. There, morphological phenomena took place; there, the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit of Dali touched down’’ (The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1942).

An example in black can be seen via their website here: <http://www.schiaparelli.com/en/maison-schiaparelli/schiaparelli-and-the-artists/salvador-dali/schiaparelli-telephone-dial-powder-compact>
8.5cm, 3 1/4in diam