The showstopper at the Sotheby’s watch auction in New York on Thursday wasn’t a timepiece at all, but a pair of singing bird snuff boxes—two intricately decorated gold cases from the 1800s containing ...

This 18th-century status symbol turned the simple act of taking tobacco into a display of taste, performance, and theatre.

A collection of antique snuff boxes are up for sale at a Yorkshire auction house. Julia Matyear is pictured top with a presentation snuff box with the Imperial Russian crown. It is estimated at ...

Staffordshire potters in 19th-century England liked to depict humorous people in everyday activities. The figurines were the only way to see what a brave lion tamer or important political figure ...

Mystery has long surrounded the fate of antique gold snuff boxes which vanished without trace from the drawing room of a Leeds stately home some 40 years ago. Did you know with a Digital subscription ...

An ornate collection of seven antique gold snuff boxes has been returned to a stately home – 40 years after they were stolen during a night-time raid. The 18th century containers had not been seen ...

FEW younger readers will be familiar with, let alone have used, snuff – a powder made of ground dried tobacco leaves – which was widely used in polite European society from the 18th until the mid-20th ...

Masatoshi Fukumaru is a third-generation antiques dealer with a gallery in Kyoto, Japan, and high-end clientele in the United States. A regular contributor for Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses, ...

For die-hard antique buffs, one of the great attractions of old things is the degree of craftsmanship they exhibit. You can rave all you want to about the accuracy of quartz watches, but the delicate ...