The annular agate dish, accented with lapis rondelle handles, upon four pairs of jadeite balls, to a cut-cornered square-shaped Lapis Lazuli base and onyx feet, signed Ostertag, circa 1930, maker's mark for Verger Frères, together with its original fitted case.

Note: Tazza is the Italian word for cup and is used to describe ornate little dishes, it could also be called ‘vide-poche’ the french for empty pockets which is used to describe little (usually rectangular and deeper) vessels for emptying your pockets into at the end of a day, but ultimately, above all semblance of practicality, this is an objet d’art - a tour de force of the French aesthetic around the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes that later became the benchmark for the term Art Deco. Its use of geometric elements, it’s choice of materials, the rondelles on the surface of the agate dish and to the base (an element also used famously by Cartier in many of their jewels and objects of the period), the jadeite spheres...all these components are iconic of the period. Ostertag were so good at this aesthetic and produced some incredible objects.