The Princess Mary Christmas Gift Fund Boxes 1914
The small metal box to the designs of Professor Stanley Davenport Adshead of Adshead and Ramsey was given by Princess Mary’s Gift Fund to provide a gift for all “Sailors afloat and Soldiers at the front” on Christmas Day 1914. With the majority of men active smokers in 1914, it made sense that tobacco products – rather than the chocolate of the Boar War – should be the gift of choice for Christmas. The gift comprised: the brass box, with packets of tobacco and cigarettes (the cigarette packet to contain a ‘cigarette card’ consisting of a photograph of the Princess and cigarettes with the Princess’s monogram in an oval with a coronet); a Christmas 1914 card in an envelope; a pipe (of variable pattern); and an Asprey’s tinder lighter, all packed in an outer cardboard box. Special provision was made for non-smokers, nurses. and the Inian Army. Central to the box is a representation of the Princess herself, depicted in profile, and surrounded by a laurel wreath. This echoes the gilded image of Queen Victoria at the centre of her Chocolate Box, issued in 1900. This is more than coincidence, a nod towards the influence that the Queen’s chocolate box had, without doubt, in the formulation of the idea – a fact that was not lost on contemporary commentators:
The box in which Princess Mary sent a Christmas present of tobacco to every British sailor and soldier at the Front… is embossed with the Princess’s portrait and the flags of the Allies, and looks remarkably like the one in which Queen Victoria sent chocolate to the soldiers in South Africa during the Boer War.[The Leader [Melbourne, Australia], 27 February 1915]
It was natural that the designer of the Princess’s box, Professor Stanley Adshead should echo that of the late Queen and incorporate the raised dais with the Princess’s profile in gilt, just as was presented in the Boer War chocolate box. That the Princess sat for a special photographic portrait for the purpose was reported in the Daily Record of 29 October, and particularly in Society Magazine, The Tatler of 4 November:
Princess Mary has adopted the suggestion that photograph of herself should be embossed the covers of the boxes which will contain smoking requisites which her Royal Highness has provided as a Christmas gift for the troops at the Front. Princess Mary recently sat in the studio of Mr E. Brooks, of Buckingham Palace Road, for a special photograph, and it is this photograph which is to be reproduced on the boxes. Each box was manufactured in brass by one of at least six manufacturers, all of whom were skilled in the production of chromolithographed tinware. The three leading manufacturers were Barclay & Fry, Barringer, Wallis & Manners and Hudson & Scott, who were all commissioned to turn their hand to the manufacture of the Princess’s brass box, The design was released to the press, as published in the Illustrated War News, 19 December 1914. This can be taken to represent the standard form of the box, though there were many minor variants.
