Dear MMDs, dear Luuk,  A short answer to Luuk's question -- "are
there snuff boxes of similar dimensions and material which were made
for other purposes?" -- because I am travelling soon to the very large
organ Festival in Les Gets (in the French Alps) for the next weekend
(10th edition, 20th anniversary, with about 100 instruments, large and
small ones !).

As I know Luuk is a fine researcher in early musical boxes, I am a bit
surprised by his question, because :

1) The first thing I look at when I see a tin (very rare), tortoise
shell or black "composition" tabatiere (usually 9 to 10.5 cm wide) is
to see if it has this famous "buttons" (two in front, or one in front
and one on the left side for later movements) which characterize the
presence of a musical movement.

2) In France at least, you see many "tabatieres" in tortoise shell
or "black composition" or boxwood, etc., without any musical movement
(and they were not intended to house one), because snuffboxes were
primarily ... snuffboxes!  I have myself one or two of these.

Of course, the especially "rich" snuff boxes (gold, silver, enamel,
etc.) are more frequent without musical movement than with a musical
movement; they usually appear in different type of auctions !

3) I shall end up with a question : I never got a really satisfactory
answer as to the exact composition of that "black stuff" that many
musical snuffboxes are made of.  It appears that there were several
recipes (later ones become clearer with time, taking a rather ugly
brownish colour), and that they were often made around Paris, but,
although living in the area, I was not able yet to find documents or
places.

Artifacts other than tabatieres were made with this stuff : combs,
inkstands, a few decorative items, etc.

With best regards,

Philippe Rouille  (Paris, France)
http://www.musicamecanica.org/