The Dansk Cookie Tin, the Sewing Kit, and Why Research Matters in My Art

For a long time, I thought the Dansk cookie tin filled with a sewing kit was a Black thing.

You know the one: the blue tin, no cookies inside, but instead a careful collection of needles, mismatched thread spools, safety pins, buttons, and a tomato pincushion that may or may not still have needles in it. In my mind, this object lived squarely in the world of Black households passed down, repurposed, practical, familiar.

So when I decided to make a painting of it, the idea felt obvious. Of course I would paint it. Of course it belonged in my visual archive of Black domestic space.

But then I did what I try to always do as an artist: I researched.

What I found surprised me (and honestly made me smile). People across races, cultures, and class backgrounds were doing the exact same thing. Scandinavian cookies became sewing kits in Black homes, white homes, immigrant homes, working-class homes, and middle-class homes alike. The tin traveled. The cookies disappeared. The needles stayed.

That discovery didn’t make the painting less meaningful it made it better.

I ended up creating a colorful digital still life of the Dansk cookie tin filled with a sewing kit, leaning into memory, humor, and shared recognition. And this is where research becomes essential to my practice. Research doesn’t flatten meaning; it adds dimension. It keeps me honest. It allows me to locate where my personal experience overlaps with others and where it remains specific.

I paint Black culture because I am invested in documenting Black spaces with care, intention, and visibility. That doesn’t mean every object I paint is exclusive to Black life. It means I am painting from a Black perspective, informed by lived experience, memory, and cultural context. The sewing tin may be universal, but how it lived in our homes who used it, how it was passed down, what it sat next to is still deeply personal.

There’s also joy in realizing that something you thought was singular is actually shared. I love that people from different backgrounds can see this painting and say, “We had one too.” That moment of recognition doesn’t dilute Black culture it opens a door. It reminds us that everyday objects can carry many histories at once.

This piece is a quiet reminder of why I value research so deeply. It pushes my work beyond assumption and into conversation. It allows my paintings to hold nuance: specificity without exclusion, cultural grounding without isolation.

And if nothing else, it confirms one universal truth…
nobody ever kept cookies in that tin.