Antoine Boullier was a French goldsmith who first registered his mark in 1775, a year after winning the first prize of l’Ecole de Dessin in Paris for his designs in silver ornament. Boullier worked in the late Louis XVI style, which favoured classical motifs inspired by nature, and imitations of ancient Greek art and architecture. He often combined silver or silver-gilt frames with cut-glass vessels, and examples of Boullier’s designs for dining vessels exist in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and the Russian State Library (Moscow). This ornate sugar bowl on a stand bears the coat-of-arms of Jacques-Florent Magnanville Robillard (1757-1834), Baron of the Empire and censor of the Bank of France from 1806 to 1824, who left a considerable fortune of over two million francs upon his death.
