The Rococo fashion for pug-shaped snuff-boxes can be seen in both gold-mounted hardstone boxes manufactured by an unknown Dresden workshop and in works by the Meissen and Ludwigsburg porcelain factories circa 1750. The pug became particularly popular following the formation of quasi-Masonic lodges in response to the Papal bull issued by Clement XII in 1738, forbidding Roman Catholics from belonging to Masonic orders. The pug dog was associated with the German pseudo-Masonic 'Order of the Pug' or Mops-Orden. Members of the Mops-Orden were pledged to secrecy and unlike Freemasons, admitted women to their meetings. A snuff-box formed as a pug was essential to the initiation ritual detailed by the author of L'Ordre des Francs-Maçons trahi, et le secret des Mopses révelé, Amsterdam, 1763. As an element of the order's rituals and a symbol of loyalty, the display of a box like the present example would thus have acted as an aesthetic statement of personal ideology (A. Somers Cocks and C. Truman, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Renaissance jewels, gold boxes and objets de vertu, London, 1984, p. 270, no. 92).
A similarly formed snuff-box of 1745-1750, with a pug recumbent on a square base, modelled by Johann Joachim Kändler in 1741, is included in B. Beaucamp-Markowsky's Collection of 18th Century Porcelain Boxes, Sammlung von Porzellandosen des 18. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 102-103, no. 51. The box is believed to relate to two pug-shaped tabatière models made by J. J. Kändler in June and August 1741 for Count von Brühl, which are distinct from snuff-boxes made with only a small pug dog on top of the lid by Kändler for Brühl in October 1741 and January 1742. Two further examples of identically formed snuff-boxes with the addition of a child and putto and pugs painted on the bases were in the James A. de Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor. Also compare the example sold Christie's, London, 17 November 2009, lot 192.