A charming snuffbox. The story of the little box.
A snuff box is a small box for snuff. Its history dates back to the 16th century, when the French ambassador Jean Nico sent snuff, popular in Portugal, to Queen Catherine de Medici of France, who suffered from migraines. It was believed that snuff, if sniffed, would cure migraine.
Under Catherine's son Francis II, sniffing tobacco became a fashion, and under Louis XIV it became part of court etiquette. Naturally, this craze did not bypass Russia. The luxurious nobles of Catherine's court treated each other to snuff, and snuff boxes became a type of jewellery.
The 18th century was the century of tobacco boxes. Prussian King Frederick the Great inherited 600 tobacco boxes in 1740, and 46 years later he left behind about one and a half thousand. Prince Conti had 800 tobacco boxes.
The fact is that every change of dress required a fashionable man to change his snuff box. Various materials were used for their manufacture: gold and precious stones, aluminium (at that time valued above gold) and steel, tortoise shell and shark skin, porcelain and birch bark.
At the Russian court it was customary to use snuff boxes made of precious materials, and only in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, porcelain snuff boxes became a significant competitor. It is significant that the first domestic porcelain product created at the Imperial Porcelain Factory in 1752 was a snuff box.
Tabackerki, decorated with enamels and diamonds, with the imperial monogram, were even a type of state honour. Twice Derzhavin received such a gift, exactly as a poet, not as a dignitary, for his odes "Felitsa" and "On the capture of Ishmael". And when Catherine travelled to the south of Russia, Alexander Suvorov received a snuffbox with chervonts worth 7000 rubles.
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