The Witch's Mark Ampulla. Werwulf Necklace.
In collaboration with Focus Features and Robert Eggers' Werwulf, Blood Milk presents a trio of jewels steeped in the folklore of the Werewolf. Inspired by rituals of shape-shifting, ancient amulets, and devotional objects, each piece harkens back to an era when the night’s darkness and its creatures contained dreaded horrors.
Werwulf is only in theaters Christmas.
Drawn from medieval pilgrimage ampullae, our version is rendered in miniature and paired with the hexafoil symbol, or the Witch’s mark. While this vessel is not hollow, it is reversible and distressed to appear ancient, as if recently unearthed and weathered by time.
Medieval pilgrims would undertake long journeys to sacred locations that either housed relics or were the site of holy occurrences. They would travel, often at great cost, to seek penance or with petitions, hoping for miracles and cures for all manner of ailments.
At these sites, affordable souvenirs such as badges or ampullae featuring iconography of the specific symbols of the location were available for purchase. These objects were mass produced from inexpensive materials such as pewter or lead/tin alloys, and in the case of the ampullae, even clay. While these have the look of trinkets to the modern eye, for the devoted they behaved as apotropaic charms, as they were often pressed against the tombs of Saints or other physical elements of the location. Ampullae especially so, as they could be filled with holy water, aromatic oils, dust and other natural material that could be blessed before their openings were permanently crimped shut. These ampullae featured loops so it could be worn on the body, but they were also sewn to hats or kept by the bedside once pilgrims returned home. These small vessels enabled pilgrims to own what were considered to be secondary relics that were thought to have amuletic powers, objects of memory from a place that held divine energy.
Paired with our ampulla is the Witch’s Mark, a compass drawn symbol in the shape of a six-petaled flower that would be etched within homes, barns, and churches. These markings were drawn specifically near the vulnerable points within a home, where evil spirits and witches could slip in; the hearth and chimney, doorways, keyholes, and windows. These points of entry for the unseen were thus guarded with these apotropaic marks and other easily made folk charms such as those made from wood and berries from the Rowan tree. For medieval people, supernatural and spirit entities were believed to be very real dangers and would be guarded against with an intersection of religious devotion and folk magic.
