The vermiculé decoration reserved against an opalescent enamel ground on this snuffbox was fashionable briefly in the early 1780s, more specifically in the year of date letter S, 1781–1782. Other examples include an oval box by Blerzy – retailed by Au Petit Dunkerque and stamped with the number 218 – in the Khalili Collection, an oval box by Blerzy in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and a box by Jean Joseph Barrière in the Wallace Collection, London. Pale opalescent enamel grounds had been first used in the late 1770s for boxes painted with dendritic designs. Dendritic and vermiculé motifs were both championed by Charles Raymond Granchez at his emporium Au Petit Dunkerque. While vermiculated decoration had been first used in architecture in Roman times, and had enjoyed a significant revival during the Renaissance, its wider use in the decorative arts only occurred in the eighteenth century. The motif was used by Pierre Jean Bellangé for a snuffbox in the Louvre dated 1762–1763. In the same decade it was taken up by the decorators at the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, while in England in 1777 it was adapted for a textile design.

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