Would you say this is a compact or Snuff box

Battin Sterling, compact or snuff box? Either? No mirror for compact. Has a ring for maybe a chatelaine? Thank you for any insight.

 

I guess snuff or tobacco box. Is it marked?

 

I'd say a snuff box for the watch chain.

 

Battin & Co.

 

Thanks to you all! I am going with Snuff. I appreciate the quick replies!!

 

Love that site! I think it is a bit large to be a patch box - 2 1/2". Maybe not? I appreciate all suggestions!

 

Pretty sure this is 1910s-20s powder compact, intended to hang as a pendant or from a finger ring- the mirrors were often set in with a pressure ring and wouldn't be obvious that it was missing. Regarding the small patch boxes, they would have been long out of fashion by the time Battin was in business, and the company produced a wide variety of quality silver and gold small novelties, including smoking accessories.

~Cheryl

Bit larger one by Battin: http://www.925-1000.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18027

Gold one by Battin (on right): http://www.bidsquare.com/l/325/two-14kt-gold-compact-pendants

1919:

1922:

 

Don - have always associated the affectation of facial patches and the tiny boxes used to hold them with the 17th and 18th centuries, pretty much completely out of fashion by the early 19th. They've always interested me since I've had a 'Honey West' beauty mark since early childhood, but perhaps I'm mistaken?

~Cheryl

 

Wow - more to think about - thanks!

 

Two comments: first, to use the word-of-the-week, the box is rather twee for a gentleman of this time period. If a snuff box, probably meant for Milady. Female snuff sniffers were not exactly legion at the time, but they did certainly exist.

Second, there was a resurgence of patch use in the 30's into 40's. My mother had a box; hers, I think, was glass. The patches were hearts, half-moons, and stars, etc.

Possibly it was a regional thing then, rather than a known marker for the time of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

(And wasn't Leslie Howard just Mahvelous in the role!)

 

Thanks, Silver. Geez, women's fads can just be so silly - must have come late to your mother's crowd, Johnson & Johnson notes that they were found in their catalog from 1912-1927: http://www.kilmerhouse.com/2008/03/beauty-spots/

Can't say that I recall seeing any patch boxes in the numerous manufacturer and retailer catalogs I've looked through over the years, most dating from the 1860s to 1940s - but the later use does explain why so many small compacts, as well as little boxes intended for snuff, pills, bon-bons, etc. are so often called 'patch boxes'.

~Cheryl

 

Silly fads, women's style: ironing one's hair, plucking one's eyebrows into a single skinny scrawny thread, white lipstick, tweezing out hair from one's center part, foot-binding, that pointed bra (shades of Madonna), sheer nylon blouses, tats and piercings, shoulder pads that look like they are concealing armor. Etc.

Men's: of course, one begins with the codpiece, then Elizabethan rompers, celluloid collars, great capes which apparently could only be anchored at one shoulder (regardless of weather), the zoot suit, blue jeans that hang below one's shorts, which hang below one's...um..., and snuff and patches, and tats and piercings. Oh, and the Mohawk.

Whew! Got that off my chest!)