A MEISSEN PORCELAIN TOBACCO-JAR AND COVER

Although the present lot was part of the important King Umberto II of Italy sale at Christie’s Geneva in 1968, and its ownership presumably descended to King Umberto II via his ancestors, it cannot have been part of the legendary 1725 gift from the Elector King Augustus ‘the Strong’ of Poland and Saxony to his friend Vittorio Amadeo II, King of Sardinia, in Turin, as it is slightly too late in date. The unusual form appears to be a jar for storing snuff. As noted by Deborah Gage and Madeleine Marsh, Kändler distinguishes between boxes for smoking tobacco and jars for snuff. In his July 1735 daybook, Kändler notes that he had finished ‘one large tobacco box (for smoking) complete with cover decorated with numerous reliefs and ornaments, also made to accompany the box, a decorated tray into which the ash may be tipped’, see D. Gage and M. Marsh, Tobacco Containers & Accessories, Their Place in Eighteenth Century European Social History, London, 1988, pp. 45-46, and where a box of this type is illustrated on p. 48, pl. 33.