In his Catalogue systématique et raisonné des curiosités de la nature et de l’art, published in three volumes in 1767, Pedro Francisco Dávila (1713–1785) lists ‘Deux plaques quarrées de Malachite, polies … On en peut faire une tabatière à usage d’homme. Elles viennent de Molina en Espagne.’ Snuffboxes made of malachite, however, were not exclusively for masculine use: in the inventory of chattels drawn up in November 1764 following the death of Madame de Pompadour, some three years prior to publication of Dávila’s opus, there was listed ‘One boeste de chasse, de malaquitte, à pans coupés, garniture en or de coulleur’, which was valued at 576 livres, placing it among the most expensive snuffboxes in the collection. Even at this date, most malachite, prized as a rare mineral since ancient Egyptian times, came from the Siberian copper mines owned from the early eighteenth century by the Demidov family and from which they derived much of their wealth. A factory was established in Ekaterinburg in 1765 to cut and polish the minerals, such as malachite, in which the area abounded.

minimize...