This Irish George IV gold freedom box presented in New Ross sold for £15,000 over a top estimate of £8,000 at Tennants in Yorkshire on September 13. The hinged cover with applied foliage and flower border is engraved with the arms of New Ross. It is inscribed underneath: ‘The Freedom of the Corporation of New Ross Presented to the Rev’d Ja’s Thomas O’Brien F.T., C.D. As a Testimonium of their high regard for his character as Scholar and a Gentleman 1827‘. It was almost certainly given to his daughter Dora Letitia O’Brien who married Lieutenant-Colonel Yarburgh George Lloyd-Greame (1840-1928) and by descent. The makers mark HF is possibly that of Henry Flavelle, Dublin 1826.
A silver-gilt snuff-box of very similar profile and with nearly identical borders by the same maker, set with a micromosaic depicting the Colosseum, is in the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert collection, on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. There is a circular freedom box engraved with the New Ross coat of arms at the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas.
