The showstopper at the Sotheby’s watch auction in New York on Thursday wasn’t a timepiece at all, but a pair of singing bird snuff boxes—two intricately decorated gold cases from the 1800s containing ...

Seven of the 24 so-called ‘Fulford Thefts’ – worth more than £100,000 and dating back to 1770 – have been returned to their rightful home after being stolen in 1981. The boxes, a mix of French, Swiss ...

A collection of antique snuff boxes are up for sale at a Yorkshire auction house. Julia Matyear is pictured top with a presentation snuff box with the Imperial Russian crown. It is estimated at ...

Mystery has long surrounded the fate of antique gold snuff boxes which vanished without trace from the drawing room of a Leeds stately home some 40 years ago. Did you know with a Digital subscription ...

Have you ever thought about purchasing an antique snuff box? Better still, one that belonged to Napoleon himself? Well you are in luck. The 200-year-old lacquered box that was used to house finely ...

An ornate collection of seven antique gold snuff boxes has been returned to a stately home – 40 years after they were stolen during a night-time raid. The 18th century containers had not been seen ...

Francesca Balzan, curator of the Palazzo Falson Historic House Museum, speaks about the venue’s latest exhibition – Snuff Boxes: From Accessories to Objets d’Art, which showcases an eclectic array of ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

FEW younger readers will be familiar with, let alone have used, snuff – a powder made of ground dried tobacco leaves – which was widely used in polite European society from the 18th until the mid-20th ...