This collection restores and reimagines rare ephemera tied to the histories of African diasporic life, commerce, and spiritual practice. Sourced from mid-20th century catalogs, advertisements, and lithographic illustrations, each plate has been digitally restored by hand, balancing the patina of age with renewed clarity.

More than commercial relics, these prints reveal the layered intersections of beauty, belief, and survival. The series opens with Van Van perfume oil which has been long associated with hoodoo traditions. It recalls how African American chemists, excluded from formal education and the perfumery establishment, carved out their own space of invention. Du-rags, marketed as hair care, also served as adornment and as understated tools of spiritual protection.

Re-read as arcana, these images transform into documents of everyday magic; ordinary commodities imbued with symbolic charge.

Together, they trace how diasporic communities encoded resilience, transformation, and spiritual technology into the textures of daily life.