The Wallace Collection : Catalogue Of Gold Boxes

The 18th-century gold snuffbox was the ultimate fashion accessory. The skills of the goldsmith, the enameller, the lapidary and the miniaturist combined to form a piece - always different - for the most discerning clientele that Europe has ever known.

The Wallace Collection has some of the finest gold boxes in the world. It contains a remarkable group of boxes by the greatest goldsmiths of the period: Jean Ducrollay, Pierre-François Drais and Louis Roucel from Paris, or the Germans Jean-Guillaume-Georges Kruger of Berlin, Johann Christian Neuber of Dresden and Ignatius Peter Krafft of Hanau.

In this book the author discusses the history of snuff-taking and the development, manufacture and collecting of gold boxes, with a particular emphasis on the sources from which the craftsmen took their inspiration. The catalogue contains 99 pieces from approximately 100 years from the late 1730s.