Phrenology is one thing. But the notion of the skull has almost always a reminder of death. It is in the image of the head, skin stripped off, that we see our own basic materiality, we see our fragility, we see that we, too, are not invincible. Perhaps one of the best examples of this symbolic use of the skull is found in William Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. Hamlet recognises the the skull of an old friend, saying "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest..."  The irony implicit here is that Hamlet is metonymically addressing his friend who is now dead, yet this friend was a fellow of "infinite jest". And so the disjunction of humour with death underscores a more important message in the play: that we can but laugh about our own mortality because it is otherwise so terribly frightening to us. If you like skulls, if you attach a certain symbolism to them, if they mean something to you, if you're inspired by the gothic and the other-worldly, then order yourself a pair of these cufflinks today.