Patch box

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.



In the later 1750s, Parisian goldsmiths began to use hunting scenes as a theme for snuffbox decoration. For inspiration, the gold chasers may have referred to sets of designs such as Divers Sujets de Chasse pour les Tabatiers published circa 1755 by Gilles Demarteau (1772–1776). Decorated with groups of domestic fowl, animals, landscape motifs, and flowers on a horizontally ribbed ground within border of chased scrolls and flowers, this small box may be described as a journée de chasse. This would imply that it held enough snuff for a day of hunting.



In the inventory of the chattels of Mme de Pompadour drawn up following her death in 1764, a number of snuffboxes were described as journée de chasse or boeste de chasse.



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.