Print Projects

"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

"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

"A pioneering work revelatory of meaning and ramifications in seemingly humble artifacts—seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries coquilla snuff holders. This uniquely Black Atlantic artform expresses the artistry and perspective of those who had no voice in their fate – the enslaved. These small nut-carved vessels speak resoundingly of material culture’s power to testify for those who, in their own time, could not."
Leslie Greene Bowman
President Emerita, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello