“But if you really like tobacco so much...”

Over the years, specialists in a variety of different crafts worked on accessories for smoking or inhaling tobacco, producing some high quality works of applied art. These articles reflected the stylistic tendencies, traditions and tastes of several successive eras. The inhabitants of Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky Krai (Maritime Territory) will be able to see just such exhibits from the stocks of the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Applied Art.

“The Hermitage–Vladivostok is continuing its own programme that accords so well with the spirit of diversity that is characteristic of the Hermitage generally. Around tobacco a little encyclopaedia forms of cultural influences – both positive and harmful,” says Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage.

The exhibition, whose title is taken from an early poem by Pushkin, presents some 60 objects connected with Europeans’ tobacco culture between the late 17th and early 20th centuries. They include pipes and cigarette holders, tobacco pouches and graters, cigarette cases, matchboxes and ashtrays. Some of the items are going on public show for the first time.

The exhibition curator is Anastasia Anatolyevna Kudrina, a researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Applied Art.

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Tobacco was first brought to the Old World by Christopher Columbus at the end of the 15th century. Since that time, attitudes towards the plant changed repeatedly. It was called at one moment “the sacred herb”, at another “the devil’s weed”. Its flowers were admired and grown in beds or pots, while the leaves were used as a treatment for toothache and headaches, colic, coughs and even cuts.

Tobacco first found its way to Russia at the time of Ivan the Terrible, in 1553, after which it became a vogue and fell under a ban by turns. It was only in the reign of Peter I that decrees were issued permitting the open trading of this foreign crop.

At that time, people had developed the habit of not only smoking tobacco, but also inhaling it in the form of snuff. To carry it about, they used both special pouches made of leather or cloth and snuffboxes made of wood, metal and later porcelain as well, decorated with painting, coloured enamels and precious stones.

The “gallant” 18th century has gone down for ever in history as the “age of the snuffbox”. For a member of high society not to possess an accessory of this sort was considered not merely bad form, but even a breach of etiquette. Monarchs would present such expensive knickknacks to subjects who had provided distinguished service. A snuffbox bearing the ruler’s portrait or monogram was considered a mark of his or her particular favour.

The Hermitage possesses one of the world’s largest collections of snuffboxes, a portion of which appears in the exhibition. They include works by French, German, Russian, Swiss and even Japanese makers.

Among them are three snuffboxes that belonged to Catherine the Great. One of them was made of gold in the shape of a pugdog lying down, Another is embellished with precious and semiprecious stones found in Siberia and supplemented with a cameo showing the Empress’s profile.

In the display there are also pocket snuffboxes bearing portraits of Peter the Great and Alexander I, as well as two large tabletop ones made from amethyst and lapis lazuli. The latter is constructed in such a way that it has separate sections that can be used for two different kinds of tobacco.

Of particular interest are the snuffboxes that incorporate some sort of “secret”, such as a timepiece, a little flask, a spyglass or a musical mechanism. Examples of these can also be found in the exhibition.

Another section of the display is devoted to smokers’ pipes, the making of which required particular craftsmanship. Their sizes, as well as the materials from which they were made and the subjects of their painted and carved decoration, are exceptionally diverse. The exhibition features pipes made from wood, metal, the mineral called meerschaum, clay and porcelain, with both elaborate and simple shapes.

When the mass production of cigars, cigarettes and papirosy (a Russian variety of cigarette incorporating a cardboard mouthpiece) began, special containers in which to keep them also appeared – cigar boxes, cigar and cigarette cases. Those are represented in the exhibition by works from Western European and Russian craftspeople.

The display is supplemented by attributes that invariably accompanied the smoking process – ashtrays and matchboxes. The most unusual exhibits include tobacco graters. Around the turn of the 18th century, tobacco was only sold as bundles of leaves, so that the consumer would have to break them down by hand.