It all started with a pair of beautiful, hand-painted eighteenth-century apothecary glass jars from the Pharmacy Museum in Cluj. The items were once used in the "Red Crab" Apothecary Shop from Bratislava, hence the red crab depicted on top of the signatures that read "Mercurius niger mosc[at]" and "Mercurius Phoshpor[ic]." In the Early Modern period many mercury preparations were actual used as medicine, though toxic in higher concentrations and/or dosage. The jars are included in the temporary exhibition on show, The History of Poison.
Working with the items I felt inspired and prepared a large linocut depicting historical apothecary jars, among which one of the jars in question. The signatures proved rather tricky, as due to the printing itself, left and right become reversed, so inscriptions have to be rendered flipped horizontally (a usual procedure is to draw looking at the model through a mirror, though my hemispheres seem to get too much confused and I simply transfer such elements). The full work is available in my Etsy shop.
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| Mirrored drawing of the signatures |
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| Detail of the linoleum plate |
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| Detail of the printed linocut |
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