In the mid-eighteenth century prints after paintings of bucolic gallantries by Antoine Watteau (1684 –1721), Nicolas Lancret (1690–1745) and François Boucher (1703–1770) were readily used as a source of inspiration by painters at Meissen and other porcelain manufactories. Shortly afterwards the niello workers of Veliky Ustyug and Moscow, perhaps inspired by porcelain snuffboxes imported into Russia, began to use such prints for the vignettes with which they decorated their own work – the moulded rocaille borders of some porcelain boxes rendered instead in niello, as seen on this snuffbox.
Save for a later French control, this snuffbox is unmarked, which is not unusual for silver-gilt and niello objects produced in Veliky Ustyug at this date. The quality of the work is fine, suggesting it may be from the workshop of one of the pre eminent masters such as Alexei Moshnin or the brothers Afanasiy and Stepan Popov.

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