Muninn, Carved Raven Skull

Odin kept two. He said he feared for Huginn, but he feared more for Muninn.

This is the one that did not come home

Thought he could lose. Memory he could not. That is the whole of it, and it is a thousand years old, and it happens to be exactly true of an object like this.

The knotwork is cut, not printed on

Interlace across the braincase, down the cheek and along the jaw, then a hard clean stop two thirds of the way out the beak. From there to the tip it is bare bone, polished, with nothing on it at all.

Every line is washed by hand afterwards, so the dark sits down in the cut and the raised bone stays pale. That is the step that makes the pattern read from across a room instead of turning into a rough grey surface, and it is the slowest part of making one.

Why the beak is left alone

Three reasons, and they agree. It is the silhouette, so it should stay clean. It is the thinnest and most fragile part, and a groove cut into it is a fracture waiting for the postal system. And polished beak against worked skull is the contrast that makes both halves worth looking at.

The bird the plague doctors copied

The beaked mask came from this shape, not the other way round. Physicians filled the beak with herbs against air they believed carried the sickness, and the bird they were copying was the one already standing on the dead. If it looks like a plague doctor to you, that is not a coincidence, it is the original.

Never an animal

No bone, no beetle cleaning, no permit, no smell, and nothing died for it. Sculpted from scratch, printed, carved, washed and finished by hand in Australia.

Huginn is coming

The second raven carries a different interlace: tighter, more angular, less spiralled. Thought and memory, told in the carving rather than on the label. They will be sold singly and as a pair. Ask and you will be told first.

The numbers

• Printed, carved, washed and finished by hand in Australia.
• SPECIMEN 008. That number belongs to this design and will never be given to another.
• Dimensions to be confirmed.

Looking after it

The beak tip is a long thin taper and it is the part that breaks. Lift it by the braincase, never by the beak. Dust with a soft dry brush, which is also what keeps the wash crisp. Out of direct sun, because PLA softens around 60 degrees.

How it is made

Modelled from scratch, printed here on our own machines, then cleaned up, finished and packed by hand. Nothing is outsourced and nothing is cast, so every piece carries faint layer lines and no two come out quite identical. We could sand those out. We would rather you could see it was made than see it was manufactured.

PLA, which is a corn-starch derived plastic. It is rigid, it holds fine detail better than almost anything else at this price, and it has one weakness worth knowing: it softens at around 60 degrees. A sunny windowsill in February is the one place it should never live.

Ordering one now

Everything here is made to order. Nothing sits in a box waiting, which is why you are not paying for a warehouse. Order it and yours goes into the next batch, usually within a fortnight, and you are emailed when it goes on the bed and again when it ships.

Change your mind before it is printed and we refund it in full without asking why. After that you still have every right you have under Australian Consumer Law, which we cannot exclude and would not want to.