Snuff Box (Tabatière) (1768–78): Art, History and Details

Snuff Box (Tabatière) (1768–78) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre-Nicholas Pleyard (French).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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).

Object facts

• Title: Snuff Box (Tabatière)
• Date: 1768–78
• Creator attribution: Pierre-Nicholas Pleyard (French)
• Culture: France
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: gouache miniatures mounted on gold
• Dimensions: Overall: 2.6 x 5.3 cm (1 x 2 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1958.123

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Edward B. Greene

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.