A CHARLES II GOLD TOBACCO-BOX

Boxes depicting King Charles I certainly were extant during the King's lifetime as shown in the letters of the Royalist Thomas Knyvett, 5th Baron Berners (1596–1658). In 1640 Knyvett wrote to his wife 'to send by this bearer towe Hollingsworth Tobaccoe boxes with the King's picture of silver.' B. Schofield ed., The Knyvett Letters, 1620-1644, London, 1949, p. 100. However, dating these boxes remains a subject for debate. An identical gold box in the Gilbert Collection, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, illustrated in T. Schroder, Gold and Silver in the Gilbert Collection, Los Angeles, 1988, no. 23 can be closely compared to a silver tobacco box of identical design to the present example, with the maker's mark BB for a silversmith active from 1673 to 1683. It seems therefore more likely that all these boxes, including the present lot, were commemorative and date from the reign of King Charles II.