Trinket boxes date way back. In the 18th century, people inhaled a substance called “snuff”. Snuff is a tobacco that has been ground up very finely. Although this habit sounds strange to us today, it was indeed the rage! Of course, since the snuff was such a finely ground up substance, they needed little boxes in which they could store it.
Porcelain was used to make the trinket boxes. Snuff, being a habit of the richer citizens, was a money-making endeavor for not only the manufacturers of the tobacco. Snuff boxes were made so that the snuff users would be able to color coordinate them with different outfits.
In the 1920s, Charles Sinclair brought Limoges Trinket boxes to the United States. All of the boxes he introduced to the country were hand painted by an artist that specialized in painting this type of material. Now the boxes are considered vintage and used as home decor.
Today, the Limoges snuffboxes are now called trinket boxes. They can be used to store small pieces of jewelry which fit perfectly into the boxes. Pendants, earrings, rings, any type of small items can be stored in a Limoges trinket box. The boxes come in different designs and shapes such as instruments and figurines.
Limoges trinket
