Icy embellishments: Arctic imagery and the decorative arts.

In the summer of 1869, after serving two terms as governor of New York, eleven years as a United States senator, and eight years as secretary of state, William Henry Seward celebrated his retirement from public service with a triumphal tour of North America. The trip was highlighted by visits to California, whose admission to the Union he had championed in 1850, and to Alaska, whose purchase from Russia he had brokered in 1867. During one of the many adulatory dinners held in his honor on the Pacific Coast, Seward was presented with a gold cigar box spectacularly decorated with scenes of the vast northern territory then popularly known as "Seward's Folly" (Fig. 2).