The Stuff of Snuff: The Affective and Sensory Connotations of Snuffboxes in Eighteenth-Century Culture

What is it about?

This article explores the relationship between emotions and material culture in relation to one specific artefact, the snuff-box. Small in scale, capable of activating multiple senses, and hugely fashionable, the snuff-box became an enormously popular accessory that was extensively used by both sexes in eighteenth-century society. Its scale, and intimate relationship to the body, made it an ideal gift between lovers or courting couples, and it could be personalised to carry affective inscriptions, imagery or even portraits. The article seeks to identify its role in the performance of private and public identities in eighteenth-century society.

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Why is it important?

Snuff boxes are now overwhelmingly studied from the point of view of their aesthetic and material value, and not from the perspective of their affective ties between people. They were not just material objects, but sites of memory, tokes of love, and in some cases objects of erotic desire. We are attempting to reconstruct the relationships they formed a part of.