Shaped, dark grey, agate scent bottle, mounted with scrolled gold cagework and suspension loop, chased with rocaille scrolls, birds and a putto; with a diamond thumbpiece.

Objects of this type were typically purchased in an eighteenth-century English toyshop (or shop that sold small precious objects), of the period. A bill to Frederick, Prince of Wales, for example, from the shop of Paul Bertrand of October 1738 included not only eight snuff boxes in various materials, but also two etuis, two pocket books, a toothpick case, a gold ‘smelling bottle’ and an onyx egg.

Mary Delany’s letter to her sister Anne Dewes, of 14-17 January 1756 suggests that these small objects were an essential element of one’s fashionable costume. Describing the clothes of their cousin Mrs Spencer on her first visit to Court, she notes not only her white and silver dress and her lavish diamond jewellery but also ‘her watch and etuy suited to the rest’.

Bertrand’s bill makes clear that these luxury scent-bottle cases and etuis came in a range of materials and decorative finishes – Frederick bought not only ‘an inlay’d estwey’ but also versions in bloodstone and carnelian. The use of polished hardstones was also described by Mrs Delany, who, on 22 April 1740, visited ‘Faulkner’s the famous lapidary, where we saw abundance of fine things, and the manner of cutting and polishing pebbles &c’.

Text adapted from The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014