African-American Vaudeville Entertainer's Trunk with family photographs and assorted talismans. American. 1927
The performer associated with this steamer trunk, Abraham Linkoln Hall, traveled extensively in the 1920s. Among the elaborate assemblage of lucky charms, souvenirs, pictures and family photographs is a hand signed card identifying him. The trunk serves as kind of religious altar since, wherever he went, his family members, magical charms and good luck gimcracks accompanied him. Encompassing both personal photographs and popular symbolic imagery, this marvelous piece of folk art resembles one of a Joseph Cornell’s surreal boxes.
