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I wanted to use this as an icon, here's a clean cut out, for anyone interested
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Historical Artifacts
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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
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Oh, nice!
It's interesting that they decided to carve it with missing teeth.
19-th century is, like, the age of most of buildings in old European cities like Vienna.
- century is just a few generations ago. You find houses twice as old in every village here.
this means nothing to me – oh Vienna.
Is the skull real or ivory?
The skull is real ivory.
I don't really see how you could get the snake to fit so well with a real skull. It's tail even goes through some kind of hole at the jaw hinge. So I guess it must all be made of ivory even though it looks super real
What's wild to me is the sutures. That's a detail I didn't expect on a carving of a skull, and it makes me wonder how many real skulls the artist held in his hand to compare. I'm 99% sure it's all ivory, the area above the teeth looks just a little too smooth for it to be a actual skull, but good GOD is that detailed and amazing
When you were out partying, I studied the skull.
It's worth Google Lensing this picture to see how many more there are of this type of memento mori, in various sizes, usually smaller than a real skull.
Ivory, I believe.
This question is also mine.