I have read a few books and articles about the old snuff shop of Fribourg and Treyer in The Haymarket, London.

Somewhere there are references to cheap snuff boxes they had made for them. 

They were a sort of papier mache made from potato peelings and some other ingredients.

Due to their shape and ingredients of manufacture, the staff nicknamed them “potatoes”.

I have never seen a box identified as such, but have just found an unusually shaped snuff box on ebay.   Advertised as papier mache  and it’s potato shaped.

I don’t like the idea of pinching the image from ebay, but the item code on ebay uk is    401310987129     in case anyone is interested. 

Any snuffbox collectors recognise it as a F&T Potato or is it just wishful thinking on my behalf?

Does anybody know of any genuine F&T Potato snuffbox images online?

Cheers.

I also have never seen these papier mache boxes referred to as ‘potatoes’ but they are common enough that, if Fribourg & Treyer were selling them, it’s a good bet that they are one and the same kind. Often that’s the best we can do when doing history. Hopefully someone with specific knowledge will chime in here, but failing that it’s at least a very good bet. A likely possibility is that this was a common type of snuffbox, and not proprietary to F&T, in which case there isn’t much reason, lacking a pedigree or stamp or somesuch, to think that any particular such box was manufactured by or for F&T specifically.