Diepper Boxes 

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The ivory centre of Dieppe produced many talents over the centuries. The predominant form of box production, so-called Diepper boxes for micro-technical artists, had a circular shape. Presumably, the circular shape was the most stable and economically effective form of case, also because of the shape of the tusks and the thin processing to the point of being translucent. 

If you look at the boxes and both the construction and the representations, you can see different criteria and also degrees of difficulty concerning the production and elaboration of the miniature pictures in microtechnology. Here are some examples of the processing of the miniature pictures in microtechnology into the boxes and a sketch of the construction of a box. This shows that extensive work was necessary in order to be able to produce the total product of the tabatiere.

The ivory period of the princely collectors and wonder objects ended in the middle of the 18th century due to the emergence of the new coloured material porcelain as well as the political and economic changes in Europe.