Nathaniel Hone with a porte-crayon, National Portrait Gallery

Nathaniel Hone with a porte-crayon, National Portrait Gallery (London) (2013) ‘The artist’s porte‑crayon’, Artists, their materials & suppliers, National Portrait Gallery [online]. Available at: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/artists-their-materials-and-suppliers/the-artists-porte-crayon (Accessed: 12 July 2025).

Some artists’ kits before this were bespoke or handmade by the artist and had to hold pigments as powder. An anonymous English painting manual often referred to as The Art of Drawing an English Painting manual, which first appeared around 1731 includes describing a “portable ivory case for colours” — as well as a ivory snuff-box–sized board with cavities for dried pigments, a drawing instrument (“porte-crayon”), and compasses.” (Anon 1731)
The Porte-Crayon was a popular tool that could allow artists to take otherwise messy charcoal out with them and protect it from cracking. In F.W. Fairholt's A Dictionary of Terms in Art (1854), the porte-crayon was described as an 'implement of brass or steel for holding the chalk or crayon in sketching, to give ease and firmness to the touch, as well as to protect the fingers from the soil of black chalks'. (National Portrait Gallery, n.d). It was described in a packing list made by Constable in about 1826 (John Constable: 1975).