Snuffbox
1726–32
Medium
Soft-paste porcelain, silver
Dimensions
1 5/16 × 2 1/4 in. (3.3 × 5.7 cm)
Classification
Ceramics-Porcelain
Culture
French, Saint-Cloud
Department
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Morris Hawkes, 1924
Accession Number
24.214.19
Tags
Art Historical Context
This exquisite snuffbox, crafted by the renowned Saint-Cloud factory in France between 1726 1732, exemplifies the dawn of European porcelain production. Measuring just 1 5/16 × 2 1/4 inches, it's a delicate soft-paste porcelain vessel mounted in silver, designed as a luxury accessory for storing powdered tobacco—a fashionable indulgence among 18th-century European elites. Now housed in the Metropolitan Museum Art's European Sculpture andative Arts department, it reflects the era's obsession with refined, portable elegance. Saint-Cloud, one of France's pioneering porcelain manufactories (activ...
About the Artist
Saint-Cloud factory · 1693–1766
The Saint-Cloud porcelain factory, situated on the Seine in the town of Saint-Cloud near Paris, revolutionized European ceramics as the first to manufacture soft-paste porcelain commercially, beginning in 1693. Originally established around 1664-1666 as a faience workshop, it shifted to porcelain under Pierre Chicaneau, a potter whose experiments yielded a frit-based paste with a warm yellowish or...