Per Archeology Magazine:
The small white thread by the mouth was once attached to a bead, also found with the mask, that she would have held in her mouth to keep the mask in place. It was secreted away in a stone wall, perhaps as a "witch deposit," a common practice for warding off maleficent forces.
by CryptographerKey2847
5 Comments
Read this as a wizard mask, it’s what this is from now on.
Don’t ask me or mine for *nothin*
Relevant detail: vizards were mainly worn to protect rich ladies face from sunburn, so they wouldn’t be mistaken for peasants who had to work in the fields and couldn’t avoid sunshine.
This was common until suntans became a status symbol with the 1950s ‘jet set’ who could afford to fly from England to get a suntan.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visard)
>The practice did not meet universal approval, as evidenced in this excerpt from a contemporary polemic:
>
>> When they use to ride abroad, they have visors made of velvet … wherewith they cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes, whereout they look so that if a man that knew not their guise before, should chance to meet one of them he would think he met a monster or a devil: for face he can see none, but two broad holes against her eyes, with glasses in them.
>> — Phillip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses (1583)
these can be seen in paintings, and have been seen as “black face,” or lame excuses of lack of black people and poor portrayals of mummery.