In 1749 the Dutch West India Company (GWC) presented an extraordinary box – finely crafted in gold and tortoiseshell and lined with velvet – to Stadholder Willem IV (1711-1751) (figs. 4.1-4.5). Inside this finely wrought box was a document asking Willem IV to assume command of the GWC, a formality that was no doubt intended to garner support for the struggling trading company. On the lid of the box sits a large nugget of unrefined gold ore, around which are arranged three figures: an African man holding an elephant tusk; an African woman panning for gold; and Mercury, the god of trade, who supports a cartouche containing the insignia of the Company (fig. 4.2). Together, these figures picture the three prized commodities exported from Africa at the time of the box's making: gold, ivory, and enslaved people. But while each of these exports motivated the Company's continued presence on what Europeans referred to as the Gulf of Guinea in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was gold that established the standard value around which the other commodities were priced. This perhaps explains the precious metal's prominence in the design of the box where it is unabashedly the dominant material agent as well as the narrative focus. The nugget is joined by hammered reliefs that picture gold's extraction from the earth (on the right), and its subsequent circulation as a commodity (on the left). Pictured on the sides of the box are the Dutch forts through which countless commodities circulated (figs. 4.3-4.4).