Front and Centerpiece is topped with a child soldier from Africa standing on a tower razed by bullets. The sculpture and images of child soldiers in the shells represent the many children vulnerable to warring factions left to reorganize after the systematic destruction of local communities under European colonization. Erickson made this contemporary example of an 18th-century centerpiece to implicate modern consumers of luxury commodities, like blood diamonds, in present-day child slavery and soldiering. 18th-century European centerpieces were often made from cast seashells and crowned with classical figures representing strength or prosperity. Where Erickson’s centerpiece is topped with a child soldier, Grand Platt Menage features Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. A wealthy English household, likely complicit in colonial profit, owned this centerpiece for serving sweetened fruits and nuts, sugared with products of maritime trade.