This unusual box, only 10cm in length, is decorated with a detailed scene carved in ivory, set under glass in a gold mount. The miniature shipping scene with a two-decked warship in dock in the foreground may be Portsmouth. The box, which has a mirror inside the lid, was probably intended to be a container for the fashionable cosmetic patches worn on the face.

The box is likely to be the work of Stephany and Dresch, 'Royal Carvers in Miniature', who worked in Bath and London at the end of the eighteenth century.