A rare 18th century tartan snuff box concealing a secret portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie has fetched nearly £5,000 at auction.
The circular wooden box, painted tartan all over, was made after the 1745 Jacobite Rising and contained the portrait of the Young Pretender set inside a concealed inner lid.
The prized object would have been opened only in the company of fellow Jacobites as possessing such an object “would have landed its owner in prison”.
Now rare and highly collectable, the small box went under the hammer at Bonhams in Edinburgh.
It was sold for £4865 – over three times the £1000-1500 estimate – after a bidding war between rival collectors.
Gordon McFarlan, Director, Bonhams Scotland, said: “Snuff boxes featuring hidden portraits of Charles Edward Stuart are amongst the most iconic of Jacobite works of art.
“A host could give his friends a pinch of snuff and, depending on the company, would choose to reveal the hidden portrait.
“It was, at the time of its manufacture, a seditious object. Following the Battle of Culloden, the Government of the Hanoverian George II sought to suppress the Jacobite movement by dismantling the culture that had supported it.
“Whilst the tartan cover of this box could only be shown with caution, openly revealing the concealed portrait of the defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie would land the owner in prison.”
The image of Bonnie Prince Charlie was based on an engraved portrait produced in the late 1740s by the Edinburgh-based engraver Robert Strange.
Strange was an ardent Jacobite who married Isabella Lumsden, whose brother Andrew was Prince Charles’s private secretary. Strange volunteered for the Prince’s army, in the Lifeguards regiment and was present at the disastrous Battle of Culloden in 1746.
The portrait miniature was painted on an inner lid concealed within the cover of the box and secured by two removable pins.
Mr McFarlan added: “The portrait of the young prince is one which is instantly recognisable to us today and this would have been equally true at the time among Jacobite circles.
“The last ten years has seen a steady rise in interest in Jacobite history, no doubt fuelled by the success of the Outlander series.
“Any item with a tangible link to this turbulent period in Scottish history is keenly collected and increasingly valuable.”
