"Seal of North Carolina" Smoking Tobacco Ad superimposed on Currier & Ives print: "An Ice-Cream Racket -- Thawing Out: "Golly! Guess You's Done Got Enuf Dis Time." "

The late nineteenth-century Darktown prints by Currier & Ives depict racist stereotypes that are offensive and disturbing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves such works to shed light on their historical context and to enable the study and evaluation of racism.

This Currier & Ives print image was used as an adverstisement for Seal of North Carolina Smoking Tobacco (manufactured by Marburg Brothers, based in Baltimore, Maryland), as indicated by the printed inscription at the top of the print, and the two tobacco packages superimposed over the lower left and lower right corners of the image.The tobacco and cigarette industry was a vital component of the United Sates economy, particularly in the decades following the Civil War.

Curiously, the main image itself does not depict any tobacco product. The interior scene shows three caricatured Black women and one caricatured Black man (all African-American) after one of the women consumed too much ice cream. At the left, the "frozen" woman, who sits atop a burning stove to get "thawed out," is wrapped in a white blanket with a thermometer pinned at her left shoulder. She also has a steaming kettle on top of her head, and two (presumably hot) glass water bottles tied to her feet. At the far left, another woman (dressed in a red dress and a white apron with red polka dots), stands on a tiny stool in order to feed the chilled woman a warming drink in a bottle. At center, a maid (wearing a white head covering, a green dress over a yellow skirt with two red stripes, and red socks) carries two steaming kettles in each hand as she approaches the "thawing" woman. A large pink fan with a white feather trim hangs upside down on the wall behind her. At the far right, a young man --dressed in a light red suit with black stripes over a blue vest-- gestures towards the woman seated on the stove, and laughs (sending his monocle flying); he has tossed his hat into the air as he dances with his left leg lifted high. The title and caption (said by the young man) are printed beneath the image -- between the two packages of tobacco..

Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888), who had established his successful New York-based lithography firm in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of nineteenth century American life. In 1857, Currier made James Merritt Ives (1824–1895) a business partner; the Currier & Ives firm operated until 1907. Many eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring spectacular American landscapes, rural and city views, images of boats and trains, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life, comic pictures, and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments.