Snuff box with mother-of-pearl lid

February 2013

The representation on this gold-plated brass snuff box with contoured edges is typically Dutch. On the top of the mother-of-pearl lid you can see a folk-art scene. At the center a woman bearly dressed in a sheet stands nearby a table with a burning candle, on the left a chair stands aside a four-poster bed, a potty in front of it. It will not be a coincidence that the candle is phallus-shaped. Below the carving we read that the woman cannot sleep because she is stung by fleas. But, she says, if she had a man to have fun, she would no longer think of the fleas but would give the man her virgin rose. A naughty, somewhat erotic tinted snuff box. As it happens, this scene was carved after a popular print by Paul Oham the Younger, that was already in circulation in the mid-seventeenth century. In addition to snuff boxes like this one, elongated tobacco boxes with the same scene have been made.

Amsterdam Pipe Museum APM 21.351

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