American Enamel Cigarette Case

Incredibly sweet American guilloche enamel cigarette case, circa 1930 by the Finberg Manufacturing Company. The top has the prettiest pink and white design completed with a spray of Attleboro roses and green foliage to the centre. Gilded metal interior with spring form levers with cut-out hearts. Marked FMCO

The company founder was a Jewish immigrant named Lazar (Leizer) Fienberg who, like so many others at that time, arrived young and alone carrying the hope of families left behind, in increasingly repressive circumstances. At just 15 years old he arrived in the United States from his native Lithuania in 1886 and made his way to Attleboro, MA. Whether he arrived with some skills as a jeweller, or learned them as an apprentice to an unnamed Attleboro jeweller, is not clear but by 1891, and still a young man, he was being listed as a jeweller in the Attleboro Business Directory; having changed his name to Joseph.