A gorgeously illustrated look at snuff boxes and bottles carved from the Brazilian coquilla nut reveals a larger history of commerce, cultural exchange, and power in the Black Atlantic world.
About the Collector
David Badger
David Badger is a prominent collector of 18th and 19th century coquilla nut snuff boxes and bottles, having assemble over the past fifty years the largest and most extensive collection of its kind in the world. He also collects snuff boxes in the shape of shoes of the same period, Hester Bateman silver, and American decorative arts. He is a retired executive of Mars, Incorporated, a world leader in food manufacturing and marketing.
About the Editor
Donna S. Sanzone
Donna S. Sanzone is an editor, researcher, writer, and developer of hundreds of academic and reference books and databases over a 30-year career in publishing. In addition to executive level positions at G.K. Hall, Macmillan, and Grolier Academic Reference, she was Executive Editor for the Harper Collins/Smithsonian Institution joint reference program, working with Smithsonian museums to produce exhibition catalogs and other illustrated works.
About Portraits in a Nutshell
Portraits in a Nutshell showcases intricately carved snuff boxes and bottles sculpted from coquilla nuts between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Both utilitarian and decorative, these containers represent a stunning diversity of artistic approaches and subject matter. Just as the use of snuff crossed lines of geographic origin and racial and social hierarchy, so too, did the objects that contained it. As a result, coquilla nut snuff boxes and bottles present a rich material archive of the Atlantic world and the central role of Indigenous and Black histories within it.
“Richly illustrated, this beautiful volume brings to light for the first time a fascinating and intriguing collection of dozens of snuff boxes and bottles, showing that even small vessels conceived for tobacco storage and consumption embodied the wealth of African, Native American, and European cultures during the era of the Atlantic slave trade.”
—Ana Lucia Araujo, author of Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery
“Portraits in a Nutshell is a pioneering and revelatory work that uncovers the meaning and ramifications of seemingly humble artifacts, long misunderstood as vestiges of European trade and tobacco use... These coquilla nut-carved vessels speak resoundingly of the power of material culture to testify for those who, in their own time, could not. Bravo to David Badger for listening to them whisper, and giving them the chance to roar.”
—Leslie Greene Bowman, President Emerita, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
“The material is fascinating, the images are wonderful, and the author has done considerable research on Africans in Brazil and relations between Brazil and Africa.”
—Stuart Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History; Chair, Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies, Yale University
Featured Blog Post
This remarkable, hand carved, miniature elephant from the late 18th /early 19th century is a rare snuff box made from a very small coquilla nut. Carved in the form of an elephant, it measures only 1.9 inches (4.8 cm) in length. Tusks made of whalebone are a striking added element. Elephants have played an important role…
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