In A Nutshell

  • Snuff is ground tobacco.
  • Snuff bottles and boxes were widely used from 17th to mid-19th centuries throughout the world to hold and store snuff for personal use.
  • All the boxes in the Badger Collection were hand-carved from the coquilla nut, a small, hard nut, 3-4 inches long.
  • Coquilla nuts are from a palm tree native to Brazil.
  • Coquilla nuts were carved into bottles and boxes in the form of people, animals, ships, and religious imagery.
  • Millions of Africans were forcibly transported to Brazil to work on sugar plantations, gold mines, and in the shipping and whaling industries.
  • Brazil was a Portuguese colony from 1500 to 1822.
  • Snuff containers were often created by Africans who were enslaved in Brazil during the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade.
  • More Africans were enslaved in Brazil than in any other country: approximately 4.7 million (10 times that of the U.S.).
  • Snuff boxes were created, commissioned, and distributed throughout the world.
  • Some 40% of all mariners working on ships in the Brazilian slave trade in the 18th and early 19th centuries were Black.
  • Africans and Afro-Brazilians were instrumental in the spread of revolutionary ideas throughout the Black Atlantic.
  • Many snuff boxes represent political figures from anti-slavery and independence movements in the Americas: examples are Thomas Paine, John Brown, George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin.
  • Many snuff boxes are intricately carved boxes representing Napoleon and ships that fought during the Napoleonic Wars.
  • Coquilla nut snuff boxes shed light on a previously unknown and understudied art form.
  • Snuff containers reflect the global influences and interactions of artistic, cultural, and commercial exchange.