The fascination of small everyday things...

By pure chance, I stumbled across a video by Sally Pointer yesterday, and it led me to the wonderful discovery of an 18th century trinket - the bergamot box. Just in case this holds no meaning at all to you: Bergamot is a citrus fruit with a rather thick rind, and in the 18th century, some people (in the region of Grasse, if we are to believe the Musée du Parfum) used the rinds of these bergamot fruits to make little boxes. Basically they are taken off the fruit, turned inside out, shaped, dried, and then "covered with cardboard" which I'd suspect means like a papermaché layer, and finally painted. 

You can find images of one example here, dating to the 18th century. There's probably lots more hidden in some museum databases, but unfortunately "bergamot" is one of the words that are hard to search-engine-search, as you get flooded with ads for perfume and, to a lesser extent, Earl Grey Tea. They look beautiful, and I had not the slightest inkling that this was A Thing in the past. Or even that it was possible!

But now for the fun part: Sally's video. Good thing that it's orange season here now!