Whoever wrote the summary/caption material for the V&A's online searchable collection database just did not get paid enough.
"Elaborately decorated toothpicks were articles of fashion as well as personal hygiene in the sixteenth century, as they had been in the Ancient World.
The handle is formed of a naked female figure, adorned with flowing bands and garters, her head terminates in a suspension loop, indicating that the toothpick would have been worn on a chain around the neck. The figure on the handle represents Lucretia, wife of Collatinus. Her rape by Sextus Tarquinius led to the overthrow of the last of the Roman kings and the election of Collatinus and Lucius Junius Brutus as the first two consuls in 509 BC."
"This toothpick is in the form of an enamelled gold arm that holds a curved sickle for picking teeth. At the other end it has a death's-head finial (the decorative knob). Elaborately decorated toothpicks had a long tradition. In the Middle Ages they were often made from the claws of birds, especially the bittern, a long-legged water bird.
Subjects Depicted
The toothpick shows an ingenious use of the popular contemporary imagery of death: the arm is surmounted by a skull and holds the sickle of Father Time. Once again the message is 'Remember you must die'. The straightforward interpretation is that just as someone in the 16th and early 17th centuries might wear a pendant jewel in the form of a coffin, or wear a ring enamelled with a death's head, so she or he might use a toothpick in the form of Father Time's sickle. The certainty of death should be remembered at all times.
But would people who enjoyed William Shakespeare (1564-1616) or the ingenious poetry of John Donne (1572-1631) perhaps also have had a wry smile about the clever idea of picking their teeth with Father Time's sickle? Might they even have enjoyed the paradox that picking their teeth with the Grim Reaper's sickle would actually slow down decay?"
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I don't know, you silly goose. Probably not as much as you enjoyed carefully wiping the dust off of five centuries of bright ash and flame until you had just enough left to cover up a few of your favorite profound thoughts about time and mortality before slipping them into a superficially ridiculous question, disguised as
a joke about dental hygiene.
But thanks for asking. You made my day.
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And btw, thanks also for making it so easy to figure out where my friend Mr. "Search Engine Algorithm" Magoo here thought he saw birds. I can only hope that some day your delinquent cousin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, will look to you as a model.