witch bottle

(witch bottle by Gary Rith)
Open studios are so much fun. If you had one you would understand why--friends coming over to chat and all the rest. You can still come over, just send me an email! We might be out of cookies though.
My buddy Gordo sent another link about witch bottles. In brief, witch bottles were from about 400 years ago in England. A scowling Cardinal Bellarmine, a meanie from the Inquisition, was made on the front of a bottle, and if you wanted to put a spell on somebody you would put blood and hair and such in there. I have made several witch bottles lately, this one I made at home with my pecan pie glaze.

From the link we read about one particular bottle:
"It probably dates from the last quarter of the 17th century, and contained 12 bent iron nails (one of which pierced a small leather heart), eight brass pins, 10 adult fingernail pairings (not from a manual worker, but a person “of some social standing”), a quantity of hair and urine with traces of nicotine, indicating it had come from a smoker. There were also traces of sulphur, then known as brimstone, and what is thought to be navel fluff. The brimstone recalled the passage in Revelation where the beast and the false prophet were “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone”. "

NAVEL FLUFF!