Friday 4 September 2009

Here's one I made earlier

I recently took part in a workshop run by the Early Modern Dress and Textiles Research Network where we took published recipes from the Renaissance for perfumes and cosmetics and attempted to reconstruct them. This was very successful in demonstrating the relative ease with which many of the basic processes described could have been undertaken with limited equipment and facilities. It also made it clear that the difficulties lay less in the recipes themselves than in the sheer cost of the ingredients required and in quality control (substances such as musk and ambergris were frequently adulterated). 


We also discussed the role of perfumes and cosmetics at court and here's an extract from my presentation on that topic. "Courts were one of the most prominent sites of practical alchemy, medical distilling and experimental practice. Take Florence for example. The Medici were at the forefront of such research and medical secrets—and anti-poison antidotes and Medici cures (with accompanying recipes) produced in the ducal Fonderia were part of the currency of diplomacy and were frequently exchanged as gifts with relatives, friends, agents, ambassadors, cardinals and rulers all over Europe. This was an operation on an industrial scale and the Medici even printed batches of hundreds of recipes and instructions for use for their trademark cures. Perfumes & cosmetics entered into this ‘economy of exchange’ –and the Medici correspondence contains numerous requests for ingredients and exchange of recipes, notably for gloves and scented waters to and from elite women (engaged in devising their own recipes & blends).  Also, to supply court needs, Grand Duke Ferdinando salaried a full-time perfumer (Marco) in the Fonderia (1588) alongside expert distillers.


Those in pursuit of patronage frequently offered trade secrets to courts. One fascinating example concerning perfumes relates to Mantua. In April 1571, the Spanish doctor Giovanni (Juan) Pacheco wrote directly to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga asking to present at court, one Gerolamo Liotto, an engraver. Liotto he had met in Venice, employing him in the printing of his latest book and he had discovered Liotto possessed several valuable secrets. The first and most important, already revealed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, Liotto had inherited from his father. This was a technique to unspike an artillery piece in no time. The other secrets he offered were to extract aromatic oils from cinnamon, cloves and flowers, ‘without any liquor’ and to produce musk oil. The request was eventually granted. This case is an important reminder that when it came to trade secrets (as noted by Deborah Harkness in Elizabethan London) "there was no necessary connection between how one made a living and what one knew".

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Silkworms & Pork

According to the Bolognese street poet Giulio Cesare Croce, a trade secret of the silk industry was to perfume the rooms in which silkworms were bred with the ‘great fragrance’ of a grilled pork chop. Researching further into silk, I’ve recently found this same secret described in Agostino Gallo’s agronomical treatise Le venti giornate (The Twenty Days), published in 1569. Excellent producers, ‘often perfumed the places in which silkworms were raised with incense, pork lard and even sausages placed on the grill’.  These odours were believed to invigorate the silkworms and protect them from disease. Diseases were spread through stench in contemporary medical theory, so Gallo stressed the importance of keeping all surfaces clean and disinfecting them by rubbing with sweet-smelling herbs. The silkworms had also to be sprinkled with good vinegar. These procedures enabled the silkworms to sense the pleasant odours of the herbs and vinegar and eliminated the danger from their foul-smelling excrement. 


Gallo’s work was an important source of information for the treatises on silk by Giovan Andrea Corsuccio and Maggino Gabrielli, discussed in Renaissance Secrets . For example, Gallo reports the practice of immersing the silkworms into tepid malmsey wine (or aged vernaccia) to separate out the healthy larvae from the unhealthy. In Gallo’s imaginary dialogue, the Brescian nobleman Giulio Calzaveglia here recalls the example of the legendary Spartan Lycurgus from Plutarch’s Lives. Women washed newborn babies in wine to test their strength: 

‘For washing those liable to sickness and seizures in undiluted wine would induce convulsions, whilst the healthy would become tougher and more vigorous’.

Also, these treatises openly acknowledge women’s role and expertise in silk-production. This opens up the whole unanswered issue of the extent to which these male authors may have appropriated female trade secrets. There are evident parallels in other domains—for example, increasing male authority in diagnosing and prescribing treatments for women's gynecological conditions (especially infertility) and in obstetrics.