Circular gold snuffbox with lid, applied on the outside with radiating segments of turned ivory between chased bands. The inside burnished and inscribed. George III was an enthusiastic amateur ivory-turner. In 1769 a French lathe ( ‘machine à guilloché’) and this gold box (without its ivory ornamentation) were supplied to the King by his Swiss-born jeweller John Duval. Virtuoso ivory turning was considered a suitable pastime for European kings and princes; both Louis XV and XVI also owned lathes and were skilled turners. In the 1730s and 1740s Lord Bute and Thomas Worsley, later key members of the young George III’s household, discussed their activities as ivory-turners. This box is one of a number of objects which incorporate ivory turned by George III. It was presented by the King to John Duval in 1774. Duval had also brought an instructor back with him from Paris in order to teach the King how to use his new lathe. A note, written on a scrap of paper inside the box, records that the instructor stayed for two months, after which the King paid him £100. In 1772 the King gave his sister Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick, a similar gold and ivory box (Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum). A watch with an ivory back turned by the King was recorded at Windsor in 1837. Inscribed inside the lid The Ivory part / of this Box was turned by / H.M. KING GEORGE THE THIRD / and by him given to my Grandfather / JUNE 1774. / NB My Grandfather purchased the Lathe in Paris / and brought home with him a person / to instruct H.M. how to use it / Henry Duval Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004