Like the snuffbox inset with an eighteenth century cameo this snuffbox is another example of Vachette incorporating components from an earlier date in his work. The six tortoiseshell panels decorated in piqué coulé were probably from a snuffbox dating to the mid-eighteenth century, or possibly even earlier. The fashion for work decorated with this exacting technique developed in the late seventeenth century. Vachette had first used earlier tortoiseshell piqué in his work before the French Revolution: see volume I of this catalogue, nos 103 and 104. Another post-Revolutionary example of this practice, dating 1798–1809, is in the Wallace Collection, London.2 The initial V preceding the engraved details about the carat, ‘20 K. 5.’, is a discreet indicator about the maker. In other instances Vachette combined this carat information with a fuller inscription: Vachette Bijoutier à Paris.3 Sometime in the period 1819–1838, the lid and base linings of the box must have been damaged and were replaced by Jean Baptiste Betmon. It was conceivably at the same date that the areas of tortoiseshell undecorated with piqué were coated with black lacquer, presumably to conceal blemishes that had developed with the passage of time.

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