Snuffbox

Small gold boxes intended to hold snuff, a form of powdered and often scented tobacco, became a focus of an elaborate social ritual and a symbol of extravagance and vanity in eighteenth-century France.

The containers were usually of such luxurious nature that they were the ultimate fashion accessories in eighteenth-century Europe and were frequently given as presents. Beginning in the 1720s and continuing up to the French Revolution, snuff boxes were produced in significant quantities.

The engraved sunburst pattern of radiating lines was frequently used as a background to sprays of flowers in relief. Made of gold and variegated gold colors, such boxes were the height of fashion in Paris in the mid-1750’s.

Gold was colored by adding different materials to the alloy. The addition of copper produced red gold; arsenic or iron filings gave blue or gray gold, silver could produce white gold but in different proportions could also create green gold.

Individual colored elements were soldered to the body of the box before the final chasing and burnishing. A very similar box in The Met Lehman Collection (1975.1.1537), also made by the prominent goldsmith Jean Frémin, points to the use of a common design or set of designs.

The earliest record of the use of colored gold is believed to date to July 1, 1755, when the dealer in luxury goods, Lazare Duvaux (1703–1758), sold Mme de Pompadour “un cadre de miniature en or, à contours, les fonds unis à moulures, coins et milieux ciselé d’or de couleurs.”

Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum.