Rochard Decorated Book Porcelain Limoges Box

Shut tight and decorated across its cover, a book becomes porcelain in this Rochard box. It is hand-painted in Limoges, France, and it looks right at home tucked among real volumes on a shelf.

Bound in Porcelain

Books have been a favorite subject for small boxes because their shape is so tidy and their meaning so personal. The decorated cover here gives the painter room for ornament, the way old leather bindings were once tooled and gilded. Each book is hand-decorated, so details vary slightly from one to another.

Chapter and Verse Gifts

• A Rochard book design
• A thoughtful present for a teacher, a librarian or a book club host
• Also suits a retiring professor, a new graduate or a published author

Between the Bookends

Set it on a library shelf, a reading nook table or a writing desk, where it blends in until someone notices it is not paper at all. It also sits well with inkwell, quill and globe boxes in a study themed grouping.

Some readers keep a favorite bookmark or a pressed flower inside, a small nod to the stories they love. It is a quiet piece, but anyone who lives among books will understand it at a glance.