snuff box
Summary
An oblong box with straight sides, a deep silvered mount, and a hinged lid. Enamel on metal and painted all over with a large repeating formal pattern in white, dark pink and blue, featuring white stars with red centres, over a black ground. The inside of the lid is painted in dark pink with a plant with three flowers.
Display Label
Gallery text panel Harold Raby Collection Harold Raby was charmed by English enamels finding them 'dainty and pretty, quaint and curious'. As a boy, he inherited a tiny, battered enamel box which inspired him to collect over 400 more items during the first half of the 20th century. These enamels were mainly made in Staffordshire and were fashionable from about 1750 to 1820. For Raby, they evoked a lost age of elegance and gave an insight into outmoded social customs. A local bank manager, Raby only had moderate means but he tried to buy examples of every type of object produced by the short-lived English enamel industry. He acquired boxes for face patches, snuff and tobacco, candlesticks, perfume bottles, tea caddies....... He even risked air raids to attend sales in London. Eventually, boxes outnumbered every other item and gave his collection an obsessive quality.
Object Name
snuff box
Dimensions
object: 3.9cm x 8.3cm
accession number
1958.619
Collection Group
Place of creation
South Staffordshire
Medium
Credit
Harold Raby bequest
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