Mastery of Design: An Agate, Gold and Diamond Snuffbox and Scent Bottle, 1760

Snuffbox and Scent Bottle
1760
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This is an odd little thing, but quite spectacular. Ornately carved figures surmount a jeweled, gold-mounted a snuffbox and scent bottle. The figures have been carved to depict a seated huntsman in a tricorn hat, jacket, breeches, and boots with his dog. The man has diamond eyes and buttons in silver settings and the dog features a detachable head, diamond eyes and a champlevé enamel collar.

In the mid-Eighteenth Century when this was made, artists often made elegant objects for adults which resembled the porcelain toys made at the Chelsea and Girl with a Swing factories in England.

To make this all the more interesting, this snuffbox once belonged to the Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso (1873–1921).