Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago
An eerie accessory,💀this tiny pendant—under an inch tall and wide—is also a surprisingly complicated spice box.
Made to hold four different aromatics—Negal (cloves), Muscha (nutmeg), Canel (cinnamon), and Schlag (schlagwasser, a mixture of brandy, primrose petals, and violets, thought to be a cardiac stimulant)—this macabre charm was believed to ward away disease.
Learn more with Applied Arts of Europe Curator Kit Maxwell.
Work depicted: Spice Box Shaped as a Skull, 1600–99. German. Gift of Marilynn B. Alsdorf.
On view in Gallery 238
An eerie accessory,💀this tiny pendant—under an inch tall and wide—is also a surprisingly complicated spice box.
Made to hold four different aromatics—Negal (cloves), Muscha (nutmeg), Canel (cinnamon), and Schlag (schlagwasser, a mixture of brandy, primrose petals, and violets, thought to be a cardiac stimulant)—this macabre charm was believed to ward away disease.
Learn more with Applied Arts of Europe Curator Kit Maxwell.
Work depicted: Spice Box Shaped as a Skull, 1600–99. German. Gift of Marilynn B. Alsdorf.
On view in Gallery 238
