Cleveland Museum of Art

Snuff Box (Tabatière)

Pierre-Nicholas Pleyard

Date

1768–69; 1776–78

Medium

gouache miniatures mounted on gold

Culture

France, 18th century

Department

Decorative Art and Design

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Snuff boxes were highly ornamented functional objects popular among French social elites. They were simultaneously containers for powdered tobacco and a means to communicate social and political status. Often decorated with miniature paintings inspired by popular paintings of the time, the works reproduced on this box are modeled after those of Claude-Joseph Vernet (cover and front panel) and David Teniers the Younger (base, side, and back panels). These miniature paintings are mounted à cage , a practice popular in the mid-1700s that involved setting decorated panels into gold frames to create a box’s walls.

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