Tobacco box 1755 - 1770

Curator: Let’s look at this ornate metal tobacco box, made sometime between 1755 and 1770. It is currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Editor: It’s so detailed. There are these incredibly intricate relief carvings that remind me of Baroque decoration, but on a really small, intimate scale. How would you interpret this piece? Curator: I see this tobacco box first and foremost as an object reflecting trade and consumption. Tobacco, a colonial commodity, becomes intrinsically linked to artistry and status. Note how the portraits elevate the piece, blurring lines between craft and high art. What message was it meant to transmit, do you think, being metal? Editor: Well, metal suggests durability, and maybe luxury because it's expensive to work with. And, the reliefs seem to tell a story, though I can’t read the script, maybe it had commemorative purposes. Was this commissioned, perhaps, to celebrate something specific related to the tobacco trade or a local leader? Curator: Precisely. The use of metal, in addition to its durability and preciousness, speaks volumes about the colonial machine and its exploitative economics. The text and the depictions of cities alongside the portraits underscore a direct connection between people, product, and place. And the tobacco box? A product created for circulation. Who crafted the design, and who produced the piece? Editor: That makes me think about the unacknowledged labor involved – the miners extracting the materials, the artisans shaping the metal, possibly even enslaved people cultivating the tobacco it was intended to hold. Curator: Exactly. The value lies as much in the tangible material as in its complex history of production and social conditions that it embodies. So, what do you think, after digging deeper, do we make of the artifact now? Editor: Now, I can appreciate this piece less as simply decorative art, and more as a complex relic of economic and colonial practices. Curator: It has layers of historical and material information!