Historical context

Silk premiums were designed to survive the tin, not the century. Copies that were handled, framed, or sunned show the pigment migration and ground-toning visible here — physical evidence of how tobacco advertising aged out of daily use into collectors' cases.

Curatorial notes

Held as the deliberate "before/after" pair to SILK-001. Together the two variants let the Archive show the same portrait as artifact and as decay curve.

Interpretive themes

• — Advertising & Race
• — Material Aging
• — Consumer Ephemera

Related artifacts

• — ARE-EPH-SILK-001