Projet Chocolat

Vintage chocolate educational kits for school children. 🍫

Before social media, we had tangible items to influence and educate our children. These vintage kits are the perfect historical example of marketing
to youth.

Starting in the early 1900s, chocolate companies would send these kits to schools and teachers would walk them through the chocolate making process. Inside were maps, glass vials of cacao nibs, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and roasted cocoa beans. The hope was children would remember the name of the company and purchase more bars.

These are just a few from my collection. Still intact and inspiring for current design and marketing.

Guess the decade before you swipe to the last slide and let me know which version you like best!

10 things I know about chocolate. Some history, mixed with science, art, and my own thoughts. 🍫

Share with a friend, the one you agree with the most.

Forgotten recipes that perfumed chocolate. 🌺

Borrowing from the perfume world, drinking chocolate in 16th, 17th, and 18th century Europe was perfumed with florals, spices, ambergris, and musk. Perfume was more than scent. It was medicinal and so was chocolate. So naturally apothekers utilized what they knew from the world of perfumery when making their drinking chocolate elixirs.

Save this for your next deep dive down a chocolate history rabbit hole and send it to the friend who’d try one of these recipes.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The hierarchal system of craft chocolate. We’re dealing with different cultures, governments, and values. As some of you might already know, I’m a part of IndigeNash, an art collective here in Nashville. We disagree but never argue with ego because we have a common higher purpose. We always come together because we have a mission that we all agree upon. It’s a beautiful way and I truly believe it’s how the universe should work.

I know from IndigeNash that the lateral indigenous way is what the craft chocolate industry can look to for coming together. Until we have a common higher purpose that’s not implied but written, we’ll be like the Wild West.

How can we get there? What will it take?

What would you say is our common higher purpose?

I’m in chocolate art history curating mode. Taking space and storytelling into consideration plus looking through a vast collection is quite the task! Jenelle Porter, former curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, had some helpful words for me. She said that every piece needs to connect and speak to each other. I immediately understood. She was very encouraging and yet I’ve decided like most everything, I can’t do this alone. I’m bringing in a co-curator.

It’s a vulnerable act to make art and it’s a vulnerable act to reveal what has been part of my inner world to the public. Every object has a soul and all will be revealed:

The Indigenous Story of Cacao
Chocolate Museum in collaboration with IndigeNash
November 18, 2026
Nashville, TN

New research confirms what earlier residue analysis could only suggest: people at Etowah, in Georgia, were consuming cacao by the 11th–12th century CE. This is evidence of trade networks stretching thousands of miles from Mesoamerica into the Southeast, centuries before European contact. 🍫

This was what Dr. Crown shared with us at the Santa Fe Women’s Cacao Summit in May and we’ve been waiting for the proof. It’s here. Now you can read about it:

Source: King et al., “Cacao in the Mississippian World,” PLOS One, 2026

Imagine four days at Hacienda Doña Andrea as we sit at the table sipping centuries of drinking chocolate.

Join us in Santa Fe this october for a weekend drinking chocolate workshop moving through Mesoamerica, 18th century European courts, and the present using hands, hearts, molinillos, and metates.

Your co-hosts are Mackenzie Rivers Mackenzie Rivers and Sophia Rea Projet Chocolat . With featured guest teachers Esmeralda Esmeralda Torres and Nancy Cacao Coyatoc , sharing Zoque family drinking chocolate traditions from Chiapas.

Open to home cooks, chocolate lovers, and industry folks alike. Spaces are limited.

Link in Projet Chocolat bio to register or learn more 🍫

Craft chocolate sells one thing above all else: real people behind the process. So when the imagery is AI-generated, the whole reasoning falls apart.

I’m not asking for perfect photography. I’m asking for honest photography. I’m also asking for beauty.

I’m open for discussion and your thoughts.

Save this if you want to try making Italian historical drinking chocolate or share this post with someone who will be surprised that chocolate once tasted like a pomander.

Popular chocolate history and documented chocolate history are not the same thing. Four corrections with sources.

Save and share.