Noses for tobacco once fashionable

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 13

Noses for tobacco once fashionable

Snuffing the ground powder of the tobacco leaf was discovered by Christopher Colombus’s crewmen about 1492 among the native tribes of the Americas and recorded by Friar Ramon Pane, a missionary on the voyage. The origins of snuff-taking (sniffing or inhaling a pinch of snuff) in Europe can be traced to Portugal and Spain, where it was originally used as a preventive or curative medicine. It was

not until some years later that snuff appeared as a social pastime.

By 1650 in western Europe, snuffing was well established in Spain, Italy, and Ireland. The French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot (the herb Nicotiana tabacum is derived from his surname) introduced tobacco in its powdered form to the French court of Catherine de Medici.

As snuff-taking spread across Europe it did not always meet

with approval. The Tsar Michael found the habit so intolerable that he decreed in 1634 that anyone caught a second time should have his nose cut off. The Church also deeply disapproved, and attempted, with little success, to suppress the practice of heathen associations. Pope Urban VIII, irritated by its use in church issued a papal bull threatening excommunication, for those who continued snufftaking during Mass. The French King, Louis XIV, officially banned the habit in his presence.

Originally snuff was not on general sale. The user would freshly grate each amount with a rasp from a solid roll of tobacco leaves called a carotte.

By the end of the seventeenth century the powder became easily obtained from a merchant, ground fine or coarse, and perfumed if desired from a variety of scents such as lily of the valley and musk. Snuff from Scotland was produced only from tobacco stalks and renowned for its purity; painted wooden figures of a highlander taking snuff were placed outside snuff merchants’ shops to denote the quality. Snuff-taking by the eighteenth century was in everyday use by all classes of society, with boxes containing the powder carried on the person. Snuff boxes were made from a variety of materials, the most precious produced from beautifully worked gold or silver. Elaborately designed boxes, sometimes jewelled, or painted with enamel medallion insets, were manufactured by craftsmen in France during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Delicately painted boxes of porcelain, often mounted in gold, were produced by most Continental factories. Also popular were boxes of enamel, agate and other hardstones set in gold mounts. Tortoiseshell, with gold or silver "pique-inlay," was a favourite material due to its natural insulating properties — keeping snuff dry and fresh. Horn was widely used as it was

both inexpensive and could be shaped by steam into a variety of circular boxes with impressed designs. Ivory, pewter, wood, shell and papier mache were all in common use.

The Scots favoured a distinctive snuff container — a mull — produced from ivory, wood or horn. Mulls made from the ends of cattle horns were fashionable in the mid-eighteenth century; the horn was curled by heating and bending to prevent the pointed end damaging the pocket. Horn mulls were often decorated with inscribed silver bands or shields and cairngorms.

From 1770 imposing table mulls were produced for formal dinners at regimental messes, clubs, and the homes of the gentry. The mull would be circulated in the manner of port. These elaborate mulls used a large section of the animals’ horns with a snuff receptacle on top, or a complete mounted ram’s head. The horn tips were set with cairngorms, with one or two containers for snuff with implements on chains — a mallet for dislodging snuff, spike for lumps, a rake, and a hare’s foot to sweep loose grains. Often table mulls were so unwieldy that they were produced with wheels for convenience. As etiquette developed around the art of snuff-taking, the box became a highly significant and elaborate piece of finery for the fashionable dandy. From the action of taking snuff the very bearing of a gentleman could be denoted. The meticulous Englishman Lord Petersham (1753-1829) is said to have owned a vast collection of snuff boxes from which he would chose a different box for each day of the year, appropriate to the season and social company he was keeping. During the eighteenth century snuff boxes became valuable gifts and were often presented as a mark of esteem. This practice continued for some years after the mid-nineteenth century when snuff-taking was no longer in fashion.

Distinctive

Scottish mulls

Etiquette

in the practice

By

JULIE O’BRIEN