A label on the base of the case is inscribed: The gift of / Mr Sandford / of Castlereagh / who was god / Father to your / loved Mother Unlike the Turkish market boxes from Geneva and Paris, the fanciful view on the lid, with its Turkish crescent-crested pavilion on the right, is based on neither a view of Constantinople nor  an Italianate seascape by Vernet. This is an even more dreamlike land, where a Baroque pavilion in the style of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723) has been rendered Ottoman by the addition of a crescent finial. It is intriguing to wonder why a Viennese gold and enamel snuffbox probably intended for export to the Ottoman Empire should have been in the possession of an Irish landowner and then become a generous gift to a god-daughter. In the eighteenth century the Sandfords of Castlereagh House owned large estates in the surrounding county of Roscommon. They came to political prominence with the activities of Henry Moore Sandford (1751–1814), who was created first Baron Mount Sandford in 1800. As he was childless, he asked for the title to be remaindered to his two younger brothers, the Rev. William and George. In the event, he was predeceased by  William and the title of second Baron went to William’s son, also Henry Sandford. Unfortunately in 1828, at the age of twenty-three, Henry was accidentally killed when, with a group of friends on their way to Ascot races, he stopped to watch a tavern brawl in Windsor and became embroiled in the fight. On his death, the title went to its final holder, his uncle George, the youngest brother of Henry Moore Sandford, who was also childless and who died in 1846. It is probable that he was the owner of this box and the kind godfather, since he was the only person in the nineteenth century who was known as ‘Mr Sandford of Castlereagh’ before succeeding to the title in 1828, his heirs being his nephews (through their mother Jane Wills, the only married daughter of the Rev. William Sandford) who bore the double surname Wills-Sandford.

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