Francis Harrache has been described as ‘one of the most prolific manufacturers of chased snuffboxes in silver, silver-gilt and gold during the middle years of the [18th] century’. His workshop also specialised in cast silver and silver twig and foliage teaspoons and sugar nips, salt spoons, etc. He was the son of the silversmith Thomas Harrache (d. 1722), a native of Rouen who arrived in London in 1686, and his wife, Mary (née Louis, d. 1761). Baptised at St Giles-in-the-Fields on 26 December 1710, Francis was apprenticed in 1725 to Isaac Cabane, silversmith of St Martin-in-the Fields. His apprenticeship complete, in 1732 he married Jane (née Grignon, d. 1758), by whom he had two surviving children, John and Elizabeth.

It is thought that Harrache became a partner with his stepfather, Gaspard Soleirol (1663–1761), goldsmith of Great St Andrew Street, Seven Dials, and took over the family business when the latter retired in the late 1730s/early 1740s. This was at about the same time as Harrache entered his first mark on 16 February 1737, when he gave his address as ‘att ye Seven Dyals in great St. Andrew Street at ye blackmoors head St. Giles’. In 1754 he moved to Little Earl Street and died in 1757. His burial took place on 23 August 1757 at St James, Paddington

The lid is inset with a panel chased with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl. According to Greek mythology, the famous Sibyl of Cumae, near Naples in southern Italy, was loved as a beautiful young woman by the sun god Apollo. He tried to seduce her by promising her a life of as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust. She refused him and he kept his word but without the gift of eternal youth, so that she was condemned to aeons living as a wizened crone. In this version Apollo is seen enthroned with his lyre while the youthful Sibyl tries to return the handful of dust. The base of the box is chased with a pastoral landscape.

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