Around 1700 articles made of carved mother-of-pearl were extremely popular. The Bellekin family in particular produced several highly talented mother-of-pearl carvers. The best-known of them was Cornelis. Already in his lifetime his work was being snapped up by collectors. One such was the Amsterdam apothecary and art dealer, Albertus Seba (1665–1736). In his day, Seba’s collection of ‘curiosities’ was famous among princes and prelates, the scholarly and the ardent collector, both in his own country and abroad. In 1716 he was to sell his entire collection to tsar Peter the Great of Russia, and immediately began making a second collection. Seba owned several carved shells by Bellekin. The shell that the Amsterdam Historical Museum has just acquired comes from Seba’s second collection, which was auctioned in 1752. Between 1734 and 1765 Seba published the complete inventory of his collections in a four-volume catalogue, or Thesaurus. Our shell is illustrated in the third volume (plate LXXXV, no. 9) and described on page 177 as follows: ‘Three children dancing to the music played by a male and female dryad on their instruments.’