Patch box inscribed “Voyez et Souvenez” [See and Remember]

With mirrors inside their lids, these boxes could be used to store and apply cosmetic products like rouge, powder, or patches. Patches, available in a range of shapes and materials (such as silk, taffeta, or leather), were fashionable accessories for European men and women that could cover blemishes or scars and draw attention to pale skin.


Patch boxes were just one of many luxurious trinkets, known as "toys," through which wealth and taste could be displayed. Some toys were functional, intended to store cosmetic products, foodstuffs, or snuff; others were intended for no purpose other than to delight. Some were made of precious metals, like gold or silver, and were sold at correspondingly high prices; others employed relatively inexpensive materials and were thus available to the expanding middle classes.


Enameled objects like this one, intended to imitate the lustrous quality of porcelain, were among the more affordable goods sold at toyshops across London and in fashionable English resort towns. Though often called "Battersea enamels" in common parlance (referring to the manufactory at York House, Battersea, operating only between 1753 and 1756), we rarely know exactly where individual pieces were made. The main centers of enamel production were in London, South Staffordshire (particularly in Bilston and Wednesbury), and Birmingham.


By the middle of the eighteenth century, technological innovations had made it possible to roll copper, instead of the far costlier gold, into very thin sheets. Powdered glass mixed with minerals (to determine the opacity and color of the enamel) would then be applied onto the copper sheets and fired at high temperatures. A design—whether a famous portrait, generic pastoral scene, or floral motif— could be painted on by hand or copied from an engraving through the newly invented process of transfer printing. Many enameled objects combined both methods of decoration and would be refired after the application of each new layer or color.