Snuff Box (Tabatière) (c. 1745–50): Art, History and Details

Snuff Box (Tabatière) (c. 1745–50) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chantilly Porcelain Factory (French).

The work and its context

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

This snuff box’s decoration departs from the practice of early Chantilly porcelain that drew inspiration from Chinese and Japanese porcelain compositions, techniques, and motifs. Rather than compositions modeled directly from East-Asian porcelain, the paintings on this box may have been influenced by European chinoiserie, imitations of Chinese and Japanese decoration that pulled from the European imagination rather than accurate depictions of these cultures.

Object facts

• Title: Snuff Box (Tabatière)
• Date: c. 1745–50
• Creator attribution: Chantilly Porcelain Factory (French)
• Culture: France
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Tin-glazed soft-paste porcelain with enamel decoration; gilded metal
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.2 x 8.6 x 8.2 cm (2 7/16 x 3 3/8 x 3 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1983.59

A detail from the museum

The enamels on this box are no longer applied flat without shading as was typical of early production at the Chantilly factory, but have been painted in a way that suggests depth through depictions of light and shadow.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71 (February 1984).

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.