Mortar & Pestle ~ Porcelain

DescriptionBaba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the dark forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs.Mortar & Pestles are very precious tools for crushing and grounding either food, herbs, or seeds, or incense and other varieties of herbal and mystical spells & medicine. One of the great symbols of pharmacology, Mortar & Pestles have been used in preparations for thousands of years. They are one of most commonly used magical mundane tools.They were described in the Ebers papyrus from Ancient Egypt that dates back to 1550BC. One of oldest preserved piece of medical literature discovered. It is estimated that mortar and pestles were used for over 6,000 years before this for food preparation. Mostly for the grinding of spices. Also mentioned in the Old Testament, they are unique in that their design has largely remained unchanged over the last 10,000 years. They were also commonly used in Egypt for the grinding of cosmetics. Mortars and pestles were and are an essential tool of civilizations everywhere.In solid state chemistry they are used to prepare reactants for solid state synthesis and were commonly used in pharmaceutical compounding until the mid-20th century till the advent of mass drug manufacturing. The first automatic mortar grinder was invented by F. Kurt Retsch in 1923, known as the “Retschmill”. Mortar and pestles are still used in pharmacology today, primarily to grind powders in pharmacies.Porcelain approx 5 inches across