This snuff box is painted with an image of the actress Mrs Honey by Samuel Raven (c.1775-1847), a painter who is probably the same as the 'J. Raven' recorded in a Birmingham directory of 1822-3 at 28 Bartholomew Street as a painter of decorative items of papier-maché. Samuel Raven 'Painter' is found at the same address in 1828-9. Raven first worked for the papier-mache manufacturer Clay, before establishing his own workshop in about 1815, and his son followed his profession.

The mass market for theatrical memorabilia developed in the eighteenth century and flourished in the nineteenth century, coinciding with the commercial production of papier maché for objects such as boxes and frames. In 1772 a patent for the production of a durable papier maché was granted to Henry Clay of Birmingham who developed a process whereby layers of paper like blotting paper were pasted on to a wood or metal core, each layer being polished snooth with pumice stone. The earliest boxes were hand painted like this, but after about 1815 hand-painted boxes were supplanted by those decorated with coloured prints, pasted on and varnished.