Nécessaire Travel Case

This Nécessaire is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s (NYC) collection of European decorative art and dates to the first quarter of the 18th century.

Fashionable in eighteenth-century Europe were so-called nécessaires de poche (pocket necessaries)—small caskets made of precious materials and fitted with tiny implements for grooming, writing, or sewing. Beneath a mirror-lined cover, the interior of this casket contains an inkwell and sand shaker, pen, pencil, clasp knife, cut-glass seal, snuff spoon, ear spoon, bodkin, tweezers, file, two-leaved ivory tablet, and a patch box. The wood case is veneered with tortoiseshell and gold; the implements are made of glass, ivory, and gold.