[2][3] In 1816 he worked in London and, on 4 September 1818 he received 80,000 "real de vellón" for services rendered to the Spanish monarch Ferdinand VII.
[1] In the 1770s, an apothecary in Saint Germain en Laye, Alexis Duchâteau [de], had hippopotamus ivory prostheses made for him, following the deterioration of his own teeth.
During the revolutionary period, Dubois de Chémant went into exile in London in early 1792 and settled in Soho, 2 Frith street.
Dubois de Chémant is at the origin of the beginnings of a small industrial production of ceramic teeth.
[7] He mastered the problem of instability of prostheses for which the volumetric shrinkage of the ceramic paste during cooling of the piece led to complications of placement on the gums.
The variable composition of his innovative ceramic paste allowed him to create systems with 28 different colours, obtained by mixing different metallic oxides.
[3][8] To make the bases, Fonzi took a first wax impression of the mouth from which he made a plaster model of the toothless jaw.
Fixation to other parts by means of enamelled elastic hooks finally gave the prosthesis a high degree of stability and a remarkable aesthetic result.
[8] To improve comfort and prevent gums pain, Fonzi used a rubber mix spread over the base of the prosthesis, allowing for a softer interface with the underlying tissue.
[1][3][8] In 1807, at the French Academy of Sciences, Fonzi successfully presented all its systems for the improvement and prosthetic adaptation of mineral teeth as well as techniques for the creation of metallic dental plates.
Fonzi responded with a well-documented public open letter and even offered to provide all his colleagues, including Dubois Foucou, with the new ceramic teeth they needed.