bread rules one through three

The texts were taken from an archive of local rules around the possible and desired use of bread.
The so-called Hausbrot [house bread] was the bread each family would bake for themselves and thus had special meaning and powers for the dwellers it coexisted with.
Next to expelling bad spirits, it could also predict a death in the family (when it would break on top while baking) or a marriage (when it would break on the bottom while baking).

The rules I decided to replicate in bread plates read as follows:

Wenn Brot auf den Boden fällt, soll man es aufheben und küssen.
[When bread falls on the ground, one shall pick it up and kiss it.]

Es ist eine Sünde, mit Brot im Mund gemeine Worte auszusprechen.
[It is a sin speaking mean words with bread in your mouth.]

Wer das Brot nicht gleichmäßig schneiden kann, hat an dem Tage schon gelogen.
[He who cannot slice the bread evenly, has already lied on this day.]

[cf. Sagenreise ins Pielachtal, Sagen, Erzählungen, Geschichten - aus dem reichen Sagenschatz des Pater Willibald Leeb. Zusammengestellt und herausgegeben von der Arbeitsgruppe Heimatforschung im Verein für Dorferneuerung in Hofstetten und Grünau. Text: ca 1900]

Part of the body of work realised for my exhibition Stubenwände at Carl Hermann-Haus, Gmünd, Austria.