09/24/2025
We're thrilled to share that a special exhibition has opened at the New Bedford Whaling Museum () featuring carvings from David Badger's one-of-a-kind collection of coquilla nut snuff boxes and bottles.
Earlier this year, Brandeis University Press published PORTRAITS IN A NUTSHELL — a gorgeously illustrated book which made Mr. Badger's collection available to the public for the first time.
Both utilitarian and decorative, these snuff bottles and boxes were produced and used by diverse people of wide-ranging geographic origin, racial background, and social standing. As a result, coquilla nut snuff boxes present a rich material archive of the Atlantic world and the central role of Indigenous and Black histories within it.
The text demonstrates the interconnectedness of the Atlantic world, the movements of peoples and ideas, and the commercial exchange of goods and cultural and material objects in Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. In this beautiful book, these objects reveal a story never before told.
