Pandora’s box… or not quite?

This snuffbox is only 2.7 cm high, 8.3 cm long, and 6 cm wide: one example of a market for fancy tiny boxes to hold snuff. Snuffboxes catered to elites in society, who used them as social etiquette in the 18th century by exchanging them and smelling each other’s snuff. Convenient to carry, certainly, but since snuff was a kind of tobacco, another function of the snuffboxes was to avoid the decline in quality.

Elegant, luxurious, and portable, snuffboxes symbolized the elites’ status in society. Although snuffboxes were primarily designed for holding snuff, the elite market for such little boxes focused on conspicuous consumption might also have become collector’s items. It is possible our little box was in fact never used to carry snuff, as a look inside reveals – besides the marks of craftsmen - a relatively smooth copper surface (compare to fig. 3).

In Greek mythology, when Pandora opened a box, she released physical and emotional curses upon all of mankind. Similarly, the attractive appearance of this snuffbox contrasts with the drug it was produced to store.