A mask built on bone.
Mēxihcah · Mē · xih · cah
Cast by hand · Painted by you
$40
Not yet available · arriving 2027
Mask, five pots of colour, a brush and the story card.
Mēxihcah · Mexico
Thousands of turquoise chips the size of a grain of rice, set in resin, over a real human skull.
The Mexica did not invent mosaic work. They took a Mesoamerican tradition running back through the Mixtec and the Toltec and further, and pushed it harder than anybody before them, with tribute lists that specify turquoise by the load and by the province.
The stone came up from what is now the American southwest, hundreds of miles on foot, through territory the empire did not control. It was worth more than gold, because gold you could melt down and turquoise you had to find.
The finest pieces were made by Mixtec specialists working for Mexica patrons.
Codex Mendoza, folio 65r, c. 1541 · Bodleian Library
The best known example is Tezcatlipoca, the smoking mirror. It is built on a real human skull, faced in alternating bands of turquoise and black lignite, with eyes of polished pyrite ringed in white conch shell.
The back of the skull was cut away and lined with deerskin so it could be worn or hung, and the jaw is articulated on leather straps. Whoever made it intended it to move.
These were not portraits of anybody. They were worn by, or laid on, the images of gods, and it is the eyes that unsettle people standing in front of the case, because after five hundred years they are still bright.
Codex Borbonicus, folio 13
Most of it was melted, buried or smashed. A handful of mosaic pieces travelled to Europe in the first shipments to Charles V and are now in London, Rome and Copenhagen, and that handful is close to the entire surviving record.
What we know about how they were used comes mostly from the codices, the Mendoza and the Borbonicus among them, painted by Mexica scribes in the decades after the conquest for European readers who wanted to understand what they had just destroyed.
Around ten complete turquoise mosaics survive worldwide. Every one of them sits in a museum outside Mexico.
They were not portraits of anybody. They were worn by the images of gods.
Ours is plaster, and every tessera is a raised facet in the relief rather than a chip of stone. The grid is there. The colour is yours.
Blue-green over bone white, black where the lignite runs, and a hard glint where the eyes should be.
Plaster, poured one at a time, in the house on the Siem Reap River.
No colour. The sculpt is the guide: raised edges catch the brush and hold it where it belongs.
Turquoise blue-green, shell white, lignite black.
What the mask is in its own tradition, before we cast it in plaster and send it out white.
Something not here? Write to hello@blankstory.co. One of us answers, usually the same day.
Yes. Water-based, non-toxic, and it comes off skin and off a table with a damp cloth. Built for a kitchen table on a Sunday.
A story card with the history and the traditional colours, so you know what you are looking at. No paint-by-numbers. The mask ships white on purpose.
Resin is cheaper to ship and it feels like a phone case. Plaster takes paint properly, keeps a sharp edge on every carved line, and has the weight that puts a thing on a shelf instead of in a drawer.
Aztec arrives in 2027. We will not put a month against it until the moulds are cut and the first run is right.
Anywhere in Cambodia. Pick it up free at Peaceful Chaos in Siem Reap, have it brought to your door in Siem Reap, or sent by courier to any province. The delivery fee shows at checkout. You pay by KHQR from any Cambodian bank app.
Yes, and we would like that. Minimum order is one case of four, prepaid, and you can collect free from the office in Siem Reap or have it sent anywhere in Cambodia. Full pricing and terms sit behind a trade login. Write to us with the name of the shop and we will send a code the same day.
Not yet available · arriving 2027
Aztec lands in 2027. Leave your email and you will know the day it does.