Metal Things: Personalised Steel Boxes (mid-1700s)

Steel snuff box of James Thornton, c. 1740-1765.
Held at Birmingham Museum.

The manufacture of steel boxes was a major part of Birmingham's artisan trades from at least the 1710s. Edwards' Birmingham toyshop (a shop selling small Birmingham wares such as buckles, watchchains etc) stocked, in 1733, one dozen steel toothpick cases and nineteen steel tobacco boxes, all certainly made locally if not in Birmingham then the wider West Midland towns. These boxes would have originally been highly polished, which was an important part of their appeal.