Snuffbox
Jean Ducrollay (circa 1708 – after 1776)
Date: 1743-1744
Place Made: France
Materials & Techniques: Gold and enamel
Dimensions: 3.2 x 7.6 x 5.8 cm
Accession Number: The Wallace Collection, G4
This small gold box was used as a case for a fine powder called snuff. Snuff is a bit like tobacco. Although it seems strange now, men and women used to sniff this powder! It was a habit that people enjoyed together.
The box was made 250 years ago. Gold boxes were decorated with beautiful paintings and precious stones. This one is made from real gold and is shaped like a shell. When the box is open the decoration looks like a white peacock's fan-tail.
The white decoration is made from enamel. Enamel is a liquid glass that is painted onto a metal surface and then heated at very high temperatures to join it to the metal. It is hard, shiny and you can see through it. Have a look at the detail in the enamel decoration. It has been very carefully painted and there are several different colours.
Teachers' Information
Activities
1. You could talk to the children about how gold used to be produced and the process of panning for gold. Talk to them about the thousands of men who would leave home and travel great distances in search of gold to try and make their fortune. Ask them to imagine the adventures they may have experienced and ask them to write their own stories about looking for gold.
2. There was an etiquette to taking snuff in public which included sniffing loudly, sneezing, coughing and spitting. We would find this behaviour very rude now, but you could use this as a stimulus for a discussion on manners or behaviour which we judge as acceptable and link this with the Citizenship curriculum.
3. Ask your pupils to think about the tiny paintbrushes that would have been needed to paint such intricate decoration. They could experiment with different sized brushes to create large areas of colour coverage and various thinner brushes to paint the detail. How much detail can your pupils paint and how thin would the brush need to be? Can they paint the eyelashes of a person or each strand of a feather?