Antiques: The increasing popularity of snuff boxes with collectors

These strange figures, less readily identifiable, are actually snuff boxes - increasingly popular with collectors nowadays, whether made of silver, gold, porcelain, brass, copper, horn, tortoiseshell, hardstone, wood, pearl, granite, tortoiseshell, lapis lazuli - or even leather or papier mâché. Some of the more expensive and ornate examples, indicators of social status, were enamelled, had precious stones on their lids, played music or were decorated with erotic scenes.

At Bonhams in London in 2011, a fabulous collection of porcelain snuff boxes made £1.7 million and included the world's most expensive, a Meissen gold-mounted specimen made for Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1696-1763), which made £860,000. In 2015, a batch popped up at Sotheby's in London, with one beauty - an Italian micromosaic and gold cagework specimen from 1810 decorated with violent scenes of a lion ferociously attacking a horse and a leopard devouring a baby goat - fetching £112,900.

No such elaborate adornments - or prices - for the three treen examples pictured here, which are indicative of a growing interest in collecting what were once regarded as simply small, handmade functional household objects of no great value.

They were made from the hard shells of the coquilla nut, the fruit of the piassava palm tree, native to Brazil, and were part of a cluster from the late 18th and early 19th centuries which surfaced at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The horse's head snuff box, inlaid with a bone blaze, teeth and eyes and brass tack decoration, made £505; the hunchback with large nose, one hand in pocket, probably French, £1,010; and the wild-eyed, balding man, again probably French, with glass eyes and buttons and striped waistcoat beneath a cloak, £505. Other specimens in the form of unflattering figures of men fetched £500-£820 each, while top price for a treen snuff box was £1,260, for a prisoner-of-war example from Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, in about 1760, depicting a well-dressed lady holding a cornucopia of flowers. The Tudor buildings were used as a prison for up to 3,000 French sailors, captured by the British during the Seven Years War from 1756-63.

Snuff-taking has had something of a chequered history. The Dutch were using it by 1560 and the habit spread to England and other European countries in the 17th century - but there were some prominent objectors to the luxury commodity. Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644) banned the use of snuff in churches, threatening to excommunicate snuff-takers and in Russia in 1643, Tsar Michael (1595-1645) prohibited the sale of tobacco, instituted the punishment of removing the nose of those who used snuff and declared that persistent users of tobacco would be killed.

Meanwhile in France, King Louis XIII (1601-1643) was a devout snuff-taker, although later, Louis XV (1710-1774) banned the use of snuff from the Royal Court. Famous snuff-takers include Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Benedict XIII, Queen Anne of England, Marie Antoinette, Samuel Johnson, Lord Nelson, the 1st Duke of Wellington, George IV and Benjamin Disraeli. George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, was such as enthusiastic snuffer (she was referred to as "Snuffy Charlotte") that she devoted an entire room at Windsor to her collection of paraphernalia which at the time of her death in 1818 stood at 90 snuffboxes and 350 bottles of highly scented snuff. She inhaled the smokeless tobacco to combat her fierce headaches - but it seems likely that the practice was more cause than cure. Users often carried with the snuff box a small silver spoon to avoid staining the fingers with powder.

A final word on treen, highly collectable for its patina and tactile appeal. Notable local examples, of course, include the smaller items made by "Mouseman" Thompson and his fellow Crittermen , such as ashtrays, cheese boards, eggs cups, fruit bowls, bookends, candlesticks and wall clocks. The term treen is derived from the old English word treowen, meaning "of the tree". in other words, wooden, and was first used in 1927.