Shagreen Toiletry Kit. Around 1930

Superb shagreen toiletries.

It includes a hand face, numbered in golden letters, and four brushes.
French work, circa 1930.
Exceptional condition.

Shagreen is a leather of fish, mainly skate or shark, which has long been used in sheathing.
It is in the Far East that we find the first objects sheathed in fish skins, from the 8th century in Japan.
In Europe, It appears in the sixteenth century to cover the handles of daggers and swords.
The origin of the word “shagreen” dates back, in fact, to the 18th century. It is the name of the first craftsman who, in the West, knew how to work the leather of dogfish and ray. Jean Claude Galluchat (with two "l") was a master sheath holder of King Louis XV ... or rather exactly of the Marquise de Pompadour, by dressing, for her, with this fish skin, the rarest objects such as chests. , trunks, etc.
Shagreen, long forgotten, came back in fashion in the 1930s, thanks to Paul Iribe, André Groult, Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann.