These unsettling, expressionless masks were actually a fashion staple for wealthy women in Elizabethan England (c. mid to late 1500s). They were called visards, and were used by women of status to protect their fair skin from the sun, given that tanned, browned skin was seen as a sign of poverty (women with sun-tanned skin were usually poor laborers). Today, however, one can perceive from these artifacts only a bizarre, nightmarish appearance.