AHRENSBURG, GERMANY — To mark the holding of the 4th international milling symposium, “Future of Flour,” in September, the organizer of the event — Ahrensburg, Germany-based Mühlenchemie — had a unique bronze key-ring pendant cast.

The key-ring pendant depicts the “Corn Grinder.” The Corn Grinders were women who ground the corn to feed the workers who built the pyramids. Statuettes of these corn-grinding women were often used as burial objects. The woman’s task was to relieve the deceased person of hard work in the realm of the dead. Mühlenchemie owns a valuable copy of such an Egyptian statuette in its original size (27 x 40 cm), which can be seen at the company’s own flour art museum in Wittenburg, Germany.


The artist Yves Rasch created the work as a reminder of the arduous but essential task of corn grinding. Mühlenchemie presented each participant in the symposium with one of these bronze pendants of the “Corn Grinder” from a limited edition of 500 as a souvenir and in recognition of their work with flour.