Art News

Pug Dog Porcelain Snuff Box for Sale at Bonhams

LONDON.- A very rare Schrezheim porcelain snuff box in the form of a pug dog is expected to fetch £12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Bonhams, New Bond Street on 5th July in the sale of the Helmut Joseph Collection of Porcelain Snuff Boxes. Around 1740, a series of pug related items were designed as secret emblems for a German underground Masonic-styled lodge known as the “Order of the Pug.” Many were created by Johann Joachim Kaendler, master model maker of the Meissen porcelain factory in Germany, but the one for sale at Bonhams is a much rarer example from the Schrezheim factory. It is believed that the Order of the Pugs was created as a fraternal group for Roman Catholics who had been forbidden to join the Masons by Pope Clement XII’s 1738 bull, In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula, and that it was thought to have started by the elector of Cologne, Clemens August of Wittelsbach. Members were