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Queen Mary II's patch box

c.1694

RCIN 19133

Patches were used throughout the seventeenth century to emphasise the fashionably creamy white skin of the leisured class. They were cut from black fabric and stuck onto the face using saliva or adhesive. This patch box dates from around the year of Queen Mary’s death from smallpox at the age of only 32. Her accounts reveal that at this date she was buying patches from her milliner for 1s per sheet.

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