All the way down through history people have needed boxes of one sort or another. Exquisite little gold, silver or enamel ones have been made for them to carry their cachous or essences, and large wooden ones toput their Bibles and deeds in: richly embroidered ones have served for their silks and ribbons, magnificently decorated ones for the jewels, and coarse leaden ones for their tobacco and snuff.

This section looks at some of the many boxes you see in antique shops. Of course, nobody would ever want to collect all these different boxes unless they were equipping a museum, nor even would they probably want just to collect “boxes“. But on their way round they may easily come across some particular type of box they hadn’t considered before, and would like to find out more about.

COMFIT, PATCH OR SNUFF?

Little boxes are always eye-catchers in the antique shop windows, and the dealer very wisely puts them right down under our noses. Certain of them, we know, were made for comfits or cachous, to sweeten the breath or for eating with a glass of wine when visiting. Others were for patches, those little black shapes of hearts and diamonds and so on which, strategically placed, can make an eye look brighter and a cheek more enticing—especially if the patch hid a blemish. Still others were meant for carrying aromatic vinegar to revive drooping spirits, and others again for tobacco and snuff.

Antique Collector MagazineHow to distinguish them isn’t always easy, but a few general principles may .help. First, it is obvious that quite small boxes, like the enamelled ones, can hardly be used for patches, for it would be most difficult to insert two fingers in either of them to take out a wafer-thin patch; nor, generally speaking, do the lids close tightly enough for snuff. The oval or nearly oval Wedgwood one is obviously easier for patches, though still not with a tight enough lid to prevent snuff spilling out into the pocket. On the other hand, with a true snuff box, you have to tap it to open it, and when you close it there is that most comforting “pfft” sound which denotes a complete air seal.

All these boxes come in many sorts of materials and the finest of them are now expensive objets d’art. Gold, silver, “Battersea” enamels (though more likely to have come from Bilston, in Staffordshire or even Paris), tortoiseshell, bone and many other materials are brought into use, also every sort of decoration, from inlay and repoussé work to exquisite flower and figure painting. Sometimes figures of animals appear on the lids, sometimes the whole box is an animal, such as a rabbit or a dog.

Many of these boxes, of course, are still being made today, so if you want genuine antiques you must put in a good deal of study of the various materials and types. Obviously genuine early specimens of any of them command a high price nowadays, but there are nice later things about still. The little enamel box already mentioned, though crudely painted, is quite a charming little affair, and cost only a pound. Sometimes you will come across a box with a ring on it: this was for attaching it to the chatelaine which ladies of the house wore at their waist to hold their keys and other necessities.

Snuff boxes also came in gold and silver, in brass, tortoiseshell, ivory, bone, papier mâché, wood, horn, even pewter. These last are pretty rare, but they are said to be the best of all for keeping the snuff in good order. Some are in quite plain shapes, others are in all sorts of whimsies —ladies’ shoes, pistols, shells, anything that seemed a novelty. But some collectors like to take some unusual material like papier mache, and collect those with fine painting or prints on the lids: there are large round ones for the table, bearing reproductions of well-known paintings. For the more modest collector there are wooden ones with designs carved or pressed in the lids, or perhaps carved wholly as animals’ heads or bellows or other fantastic shapes.

TOILET BOXES AND CASKETS

The dressing table is a wonderful source of boxes. Some collectors go in for the round vanity boxes, painted in colours. It is difficult to trace many of these to their origin, for they come from all over Europe as well as Birmingham. But they are there, and buying them is a matter of taste—and the depth of your purse.

Then there are the caskets, in enamels or porcelain, standing on scroll or shell feet. Some scent bottle boxes are of mother-of-pearl with contrasting shades carefully arranged, others of papier mache or lacquer. If you have money to burn you can buy yourself a stumpwork box, or perhaps one in tooled Russia leather, or in Limoges enamels, or in steel damascened with gold.

On the other hand you may care to invest shillings in looking out for those very attractive little china caskets which potters like Mintons and Worcester turned out in Victorian days with complete toilet sets of tray, ring holders, candlesticks, etc. Worcester “ivory porcelain”, with its tints of buff and cream, seems to be getting popular again, for it is going up steadily in price. Wedgwoods, of course, made—and still make—many boxes for the toilet table in their famous jasper ware, with its white reliefs on coloured grounds, and some like to collect only this. But now we are in the realms of pottery, so for more information on which I would refer you to “Collectable China” in this series.

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