This drawing by the Dutch and Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel (1526/30-1569) shows a scene set in a bucolic landscape of an activity of which we are all aware but perhaps have given little consideration to – beekeeping. The theme of protecting skin is conjured up so vividly in this image and the work of a beekeeper would be virtually impossible without the head to toe coverings that he needed to apply. Although the beekeepers have made concerted effort to protect their skin, there are parts of their bodies that remain vulnerable. The cuffs of their sleeves are open (and not tied tight) and their hands are not covered, while there is limited protection to their legs and feet.

This drawing is rather enigmatic and this is due to the feeling of disquiet from not being able to see the faces of the three figures, who each wears a long coat with a hood and masks of basket-work to cover their face, as they work with the hives in the field. The meaning of the boy in the tree to the right of the image is unclear, the positioning of the hive lying on its side in the foreground suggests disruption, while the three figures themselves do seem furtive – the one on the right appears to struggle in his attempt to open the hive, the man to the left seems to be in the midst of a theft, while the stance of the central figure seems imposing.

Honey is (and was) an important commodity, used for food, medicines, and cosmetics, while beeswax could be used for candles (though mostly in churches and the homes of the wealthy) and to seal documents. Honey was used in the diet until the sixteenth century, when the availability of sugar grew. While the meaning behind this drawing remains unknown, many of Bruegel’s works do portray daily life and are set in Dutch towns and cities. Indeed, this image reflects quite accurately contemporary practices of beekeeping. For example, to the right we see a hive placed on pedestals to keep it clear of the ground and behind this is a wall or fence with an awning to protect it (and the other hives) from the wind.

There is a close copy of this drawing with the British Museum’s collections (SL,5236.59).

NAD

Image: Pieter Bruegel, The Beekeeper and the Birdnester, c.1568, Kupferstichkabinett inv. no. KdZ 713. © Foto: Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Fotograf/in: Jörg P. Anders

From the early 14th century, Europe witnessed the emergence of a series of parallel practices of dissecting, opening, and embalming the human body within a variety of different contexts. From the legal practice of autopsy to medical anatomy, and from the embalming of members of wealthy and powerful families to the opening of saints' bodies in search of relics, a wide range of ways of handling a cadaver became the subject of knowledge and expertise. There is no doubt that such practices could evoke negative and horrified reactions amongst contemporaries, who were concerned with the fate of the resurrected body and feared for the revival of the recently dead. Such thoughts are well documented by late medieval stories of corpses that rose from their graves to terrorise communities. These ideas were far more prevalent in northern than in southern regions.

One particularly interesting case study is when considering papal bodies. These special bodies underwent particular rituals and funerary ceremonies. The more superficial layers of the papal corpse became the focus of special attention. The first complete funerary ceremonial book dates back to the 13th century. In this, Peter d’Ameil, the archbishop of Narbonne, describes the nine days (novena) of funerary rituals that accompanied a pope’s death. It reveals the stages of how the body moved from his room to the chapel and finally to the church, where a public ritual took place. To allow for the these papal bodies to be exposed for nine days, they had to be carefully embalmed.

Paleopathologists and paleobotanists have begun to study the remains of the mummies of Renaissance noblemen and -women. By the 17^th century, the famous Neapolitan barber-surgeon Cinzio D’Amato felt confident enough to open his handbook with a description of the best technique to embalm a human body in order for the skin to shine even after death.

'Just as Physicians protect the living from the violence of illnesses and other accidents' – he wrote – 'in the same way they also protect the dead bodies of those who became famous for their excellence in letters, arms, or for other merits from putrefaction. And since Physicians often entrust this work to the faithful Barbers, it is necessary that barbers understand well the art and manners of embalming bodies. They must master perfectly the science and practice of this procedure, either through the anatomists’ demonstrations, or through the teaching of some experienced practitioner.' D’Amato then lists all the excellent Signori whose bodies he embalmed in Naples.

D’Amato gives two recipes - one for an embalming powder and one for a balm - that include ingredients such as myrrh, cinnamon, lavender, and thyme. Clearly, one of the main goals of embalming was to make the body smell fragrant. The practitioner had to empty the viscera from the cadaver, filling it with perfumed stoop and balms, and then smooth, anoint, perfume, and soften the skin. Once the body had been emptied of its organs and filled instead with perfumed matter, it had to be wrapped in a waxed and warm sheet and then 'dipped' in pitch. Only at this point it could be cleaned and presented in public.

But the solemn art of the embalmer was related in to the practices of lower kinds of artisans. In the two recipes and the brief description of the technique, D’Amato explains that once the internal organs are removed, the embalmer must apply his powder 'just like we do when we put salt on a pig’s flesh' – something that butchers and meat-sellers were accustomed to do.

PS

Further Reading:

• Katharine Park, 'The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy', Renaissance Quarterly, 47. 1 (1994): 1–33
  
• Valentina Giuffra, Antonio Fornaciari, Silvia Marvelli, Marco Marchesini, Davide Caramella, and Gino Fornaciari, 'Embalming methods and plants in Renaissance Italy: Two artificial mummies from Siena (central Italy)', Journal of Archaeological Science, 38. 8 (2013): 1949-56
  
• Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope’s Body (Chicago, 2000)
  

Image taken from Cinzio D’Amato, Prattica nuova et utilissima. Di tutto quello, ch’al diligente Barbiero s’appartiene: cioè di cavar sangue, medicar ferrite, & balsamar corpi humani (Venice, 1669)

Cabinets of curiosities were collections of the marvellous, and an armadillo specimen was something that no self-respecting collector could do without. A survey of the catalogues listing the contents from 10 cabinets of curiosities, dating from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, reveals that the armadillo was by the far the most popular of all quadrupeds. Engravings of such collections show invariably an armadillo either perched on a shelf or hanging on the wall (see figure and detail below of Ole Worm's 'Museum Wormianum'). Established in 1672, the museum for the Royal Society, which was based in Gresham College, had not one but three armadillos. These specimens each showcased a different species, all described in Nehemiah Grew’s 1681 catalogue as ‘a great shell’d hedghog’, a ‘pigheaded armadillo’, and a ‘weesle-headed armadillo’.

The armadillo’s desirability can be attributed mostly to three factors. First, it (just as the pangolin) remained a puzzle to early modern natural historians due to the fact that it was covered with a set of plates (the carapace), seemingly likening it to an armoured horse. Second, it was confusing to classify. Various authors claimed that it resembled different animals, such as a pig, a rabbit, or a hedgehog.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) remarked that the armadillo was the size of a little dog and had peculiar ‘lizard-like skin’ where it was not covered in plates like an armoured horse. He also added that they were delicious to eat! When the naturalist Pierre Belon was travelling through Turkey and the Levant in the 1540s, he spotted an armadillo specimen for sale in the market of Constantinople. He described it as 'a kind of Brazilian hedgehog; for it curls up in its scales as a hedgehog curls up in its spines. It is no larger than a medium-sized piglet; and indeed it is a species of pig, with similar legs, trotters and muzzle. It has already been seen in France, living on grain and fruit'. The sixteenth-century naturalist Francisco Hernández likened it to 'the size of a Maltese terrier, but with a much longer tail. The paws are like a hedgehog’s, and so is the snout, through it is narrower and longer. This animal is protected all over by its hard shield of individual, moveable plates, with which it can cover itself in a ball. The ears are like a mouse’s but longer and much thinner; the long, nodular rounded tail, is also covered with plates; the white belly is covered with soft skin like a human’s, with quite long, thin, sparse hairs'.

Engraving of Ole Worm's 'Museum Wormianum' in Copenhagen; Leiden; 1655. Two stuffed armadillos can be seen on the top right-hand corner. Image © Trustees of the British Museum

The armadillo was not only a conundrum for European scholars. The Nahuatl-language text of the Codex Florentinus, written by Bernardino de Sahagún with the assistance of Nahua students, uses similarly a mix of different animals to explain how 'it is called ayotochtli because its head is just like a rabbit’s; the ears are pointed long; the muzzle stubby. And its hands, its feet are just like a rabbit’s. It has a shell; like the turtle it goes enveloped in its shell [in which it goes protecting itself]. Its shell is not bone, but rather like scales, very strong, very firm, solid, hard'.

The third reason for this creature's popularity was one of practicality. The Swiss natural historian Conrad Gessner (1516-1565) explained that it was 'easily transported from distant regions, because nature has armed it with a hard skin' so that the 'flesh inside can be easily taken out without any harm to the original shape'. Thus, the armadillo (or at least just its shell) could easily be stuffed and transported across long distances without suffering too much damage, all the while keeping its original shape. Similarly, Belon commented that 'since it is kept filled with stuffing (for it is covered with hard skin) some have called it an ichneumon [mongoose] but that is wrong, for this animal has nothing of the nature of an ichneumon [...] The reason why this animal is commonly to be seen in cabinets of curiosities is that nature has armed it with a hard skin and large scales in the manner of a corslet, so that its flesh can readily be removed without losing anything of its true appearance’.

So it was a mix of wonder and practicality that made the armadillo the era's must-have collectable!

Detail of the 'Museum Wormianum' showing the two stuffed armadillos on either side of the turtle shell. Image © Trustees of the British Museum

KWM

Further Reading:

• William B. Ashworth, Jr.; ‘Remarkable Humans and Singular Beasts’ in J. Kenseth, The Age of the Marvelous (Chicago, 1991) pp. 113-44 
  
• Miguel de Asúa & Roger French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (2005)
  
• John Beusterien, 'The Armadillo: Spain Creates a Curious Horse to Belittle America', Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, 1:1 (2017): 27-52
  
• Florike Egmond and Peter Mason, 'Armadillo in Unlikely Places. Some Unpublished Sixteenth-Century Sources for New World Rezeptionsgeschichte in Northern Europe', Ibero-Amerikanischens Archive, 20 (1994): 3-52
  
• Wilma George, 'Alive or Dead: Zoological Collections in the Seventeenth Century' in Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, The Origins of Museums (Oxford, 1985), pp. 179-87
  
• Natalie Lawrence, 'Exotic origins: The emblematic biogeographies of early modern scaly mammals', Itinerario, 39 (1): 17-43
  

Primary sources quoted:

• Francisco Hernández, Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus (1651), translated in Simon Varey (ed.), The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández, trans. by Rafael Chabrán, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Simon Varey (Stanford, Calif., 2002), pp. 215-216
  
• Travels in the Levant: The Observations of Pierre Belon of Le Mans on Many Singularities and Memorable Things found in Greece, Turkey, Judaea, Egypt, Arabic and Other Foreign Countries (1553), trans. by James Hogarth (Kilkerran, 2012)
  
• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias, ed. by Álvaro Baraibar (Madrid, 2010), pp. 175-6
  
• Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (trans.), The Florentine Codex (Santa Fe, 1982),  Book XI, p. 61
  

Main image: America, from the Four Continents; Adrian Collaert, after Maerten de Vos; n.d.; Gift of the Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959. Metrolpolitan Museum of Art

Archers’ wrist guards (or bracers) are worn by both men and women to protect the delicate skin on the inside of the wrist and forearm, which would otherwise be chafed by the bow string when an arrow is fired. This early sixteenth-century archer’s wrist guard is made of fine leather using the cuir bouilli (boiled leather) technique. It is 12.4cm in length and the leather has been moulded to fit comfortably on a man’s forearm. Rivet holes for a leather strap would have once ensured a tight fit around the wrist and to keep sleeves well out of the way. As the average long bow arrow of this period could travel at 115mph with a draw force of over 150lbs, any movement or displacement of the wrist guard could cause serious harm to the wearer or even hamper the trajectory of the arrow.

The section of the wrist guard that would have covered the upper forearm is incised or stamped with raised decoration of a crowned Tudor Rose and the inscription, ‘ihc helpe’, or ‘Jesus help’. On the part that protected the lower wrist and forearm, the leather has been left plain to ensure smooth movement of the arrow and bow string. Although the guard is now almost black, the leather bears small traces of gilding and red pigment, suggesting that originally it was an expensive, colourful, and highly visible adornment on an archer’s arm. Several simple leather wrist guards from the same period were found during the excavations of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose (see blog post 'The Roses of the Mary Rose'). The costly nature of the materials used along with the Tudor Rose decoration suggests a connection to the Tudor court, where it may have been worn by either a nobleman or man-at-arms.

The term cuir bouilli has Norman origins, although this technique for shaping and hardening leather was developed much earlier. It involves using vegetable-tanned hides that have been soaked for a length of time (varying according to the nature of the leather) in cold water and then allowing them to drain until they are damp but not exuding water. In this state, the leather is soft and pliable, able to be stretched and moulded to form complex, three-dimensional shapes before being decorated by modelling, incising, or with repoussé work. The leather is then dried under carefully controlled heat conditions, as if dried too quickly or at too high a temperature it becomes brittle. Once completely dry, it forms a permanent, hard-set material. The hard but resilient properties of leather resulting from the cuir bouilli technique were exploited widely for use in all types of protective skin guards, including small objects such as thimbles. But it was employed in particular for armour, examples of which can be found from the Roman to the early modern period.

Detail from a 15th century fresco by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of St Francis, Arezzo, Italy. Image © author

An Indian chief with his wrist guard; watercolour and graphite touched with bodycolour; drawn by John White; 1585-93. British Museum 1906,0509.1.12. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum

We read in Chaucer’s The Rime of Sir Thopas how 'his jambeux [shin or leg guards] were of Quirboily', while images of leather or cuir bouilli armour can be seen in the fifteenth-century frescoes by Piero Della Francesca at the Basilica of St Francis in Arezzo, Italy.

Wrist guards as a form of skin protection were developed by virtually all civilisations in which the bow and arrow was used either for hunting or in combat, and they were made from many different materials and using different techniques. Images of wrist guards can be found on every continent and examples in ivory, stone, bone, and leather survive from early prehistory right up to the modern era. Images suggest that leather wrist guards were the most common, since unlike bone or stone, leather is flexible and allows the skin to move and breathe. Surviving examples are limited due to the biodegradable nature of the material. In societies where suitable animal hides were more scarce, such as parts of the Americas and the Pacific Islands, grasses and reeds were woven into tubular wrist guards. Protecting this small but delicate section of skin was, and remains, a concern that crossed geographical and temporal boundaries.

JC

Further Reading:

• John W. Waterer, Leather in Life, Art and Industry (London, 1946)
  
• Angus Patterson, Fashion and Armour in Renaissance Europe (London,  2009)
  
• The Roses of the Mary Rose blog post
  

Main image: Leather archer's wrist guard with traces of gilding, decorated with a crowned Tudor rose, and inscribed 'ihc helpe'; England; early 16th century. British Museum 1922,0110.1. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum.

References to saddles in Shakespeare's works are not that frequent. In fact, given the cultural power this object possessed, it is surprising to find only 17 occurrences. When Shakespeare did mention saddles, the context and phrasing was limited to only a small range of possibilities. Two of the references are both found within The Comedy of Errors and relate to a saddler. Eight refer to saddles as objects, including an ‘old mothy saddle’ (Taming of the Shrew, Act 3 Scene 2) and an ‘ass’s pack saddle’ (Coriolanus, Act 2 Scene 1). The remaining seven references, more than a third of Shakespeare’s very few references, relate to the act of ‘saddling’: in Edward III, Douglas asks Jeremy to ‘saddle [his] bonny black’ (Act 1 Scene 2); in King Lear, the title character exclaims ‘Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses; call my train together!’ (Act 1 Scene 4); and in Richard III, Richard, Duke of York asks of a servant ‘Give me my boots; I say, saddle my horse’ (Act 5 Scene 2). Writing amidst the tussles of the Renaissance, what did Shakespeare mean for the horses of his plays to be ‘saddled’? 

The saddle depicted here, held by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, is dated to 1550 and would have been part of this act of ‘saddling’ during Shakespeare’s time of writing. Complete with a wool-stuffed seat and pommel, and a quilted velvet exterior, the saddle would have offered a soft point of outward-facing engagement for riders. However, the underside of this object – the surface which touched the back of the horse – was lined with a smooth and soft leather. Fast forward to the traditional close of the early modern period in the eighteenth century when many of the material contexts and technologies for riding would have changed, nevertheless the prevalence of this object did not. In 1794, The law respecting horses granted saddle horses a separate legal status, building on the earlier comments of Thomas Hale that:

'One thing I shall observe to the farmer, which is, that he avoid that very common fault, the making the horse serve for different uses. Nothing is so wrong. Let him never put a saddle upon his cart or drought horses, for it alters them in their pace, and renders them awkward and troublesome in their ordinary and proper labours.'

By the end of the early modern period then, ‘saddling’ a horse was no small act. It demarcated this animal as separate from others of its species and had to be done with due care and attention, to protect the animal from harm. Throughout the early modern period, British society and culture was characterised by significant scientific, commercial, and industrial changes. But the function of a saddle remained constant. As examples in a range of British collections show, the introduction of a padded panel to the underside of saddles made sure that the skin of horses did not bear harm through the act of riding. By the seventeenth century authors such as Gervase Markham used literary forms of communicating knowledge to ensure that riders understood the risks to a horse’s skin posed by a poorly-fitting saddle. This rhetoric was revived by Antoine de l’Etang in the early eighteenth century.

If being ‘saddled’ was a call to arms for horses for Shakespeare’s characters, the object itself served two interrelated functions. On the one hand, it signified that a horse was ‘in use’ and a part of particular human activities. On the other, its careful use was important for protecting the skin of this crucially important animal companion.

Tom Rusbridge

Further Reading:

• J.W. Waterer, Leather and the Warrior, (Northampton, 2004)
  
• T. Hamling and C. Richardson, A Day at Home in Early Modern England, (London, 2017)
  
• N. Riley, The accomplished lady: a history of genteel pursuits c. 1660-1860, (Plymouth, 2017)
  

Image: Saddle, 1550. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon. Museum no. 1993-31/950

Tom is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Birmingham, funded by the Midland 3 Cities research consortium. His thesis examines the applications and cultural reception of leather in Britain and Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has written Tale as Old as Time, a piece on human relationships with objects and their agency.

Small, ordinary and ubiquitous thimbles are not usually considered as ‘armour’, yet as a defensive outer layer or covering they have been ‘armouring’ or protecting humans’ fingers and thumbs from prehistory to the present day.  The term ‘thimble’ is derived from the Old Norse word þumall meaning the thumb of a glove, and the earliest thimbles are assumed to have been made of leather, consisting of a basic, bell-shaped sheath worn at the end of the finger or thumb in order to push a sewing needle.  Traditional Eskimo women used sealskin thimbles, which they kept safe by slipping them onto thimble guards that were sometimes fashioned in the shape of a seal.  Due to its ephemeral nature, however, very few early leather thimbles survive. Thimbles have also been made in an enormous variety of styles and materials, from bone, ivory, porcelain, to base and precious metals.  And, while chiefly associated with female, domestic needlework, thimbles or ‘thumbstalls’ are worn by both men and women, as they are an essential tool for many occupations; for example, cobblers, saddlers, chandlers and fishermen all use thimbles.

The design of European metal thimbles, like the human fingers they protect, has changed little, and bronze thimbles found in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the volcanic eruption of 79 CE are almost identical to their modern-day counterparts. Early metal thimbles known as ‘skeps’ or ‘acorn tops’, were either cast or simply hammered into a mould, and the end closed by pinching or pleating the metal. The characteristic indentations, which allow for easier purchase on the needle head, were hammered in by hand, often in a spiral formation.  Open ended thimbles, called thimble or tailors’ rings had an open end, leaving the sensitive, finger-tip free to pick up pins or delicate fabrics. A thimble ring can be seen in the foreground of a portrait of Constanza Caetani (c.1469-1489), a member of the Medici family. The inclusion of sewing tools in this image demonstrated the sitter’s virtue; being occupied by sewing was considered an important female quality, and the thimble armoured not only her fingers, but her mind too (see image 1).

Image 1: Constanza Caetani, c.1480-90 in the style of Domenico Ghirlandaio, ©The National Gallery London.

During the early sixteenth-century advancements in founding techniques allowed European thimbles to be made in two parts, consisting of a taller cone shape with a flatter cap.  Metal technology was further developed by workers in Nuremberg who pioneered the manufacture of copper alloys and technologies to produce metal sheets of a uniform thickness that could be fashioned into a light, gold-coloured brass, which was ideal for thimble production. Moreover the regularity of the metal meant there was a greater scope for elegant, filigree decoration and design.  From this period the designs for some thimbles, particularly ones made from precious metals, became very elaborate and increasingly included polychrome enamels or precious stones.  An engraving by Johan Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) shows a design for three thimbles in profile, two of which are decorated with tiny biblical scenes (see image 2).

Image 2: Design for three thimbles c.1580-1600 by Johann Theodor de Bry ©The Trustees of the British Museum.

From the latter half of the sixteenth century Nuremberg thimbles, known as fingerhütter or ‘finger hats’ dominated the market. It is estimated that 4.5 million Nuremberg thimbles were produced and exported all over Europe. There is even some evidence suggesting that Nuremberg thimble makers had ambitions on a global export market, as Nuremberg thimbles formed part of the cargo of the Portuguese merchant ship, the Bom Jesus, which sank off Namibia’s notorious coastline in 1533 on its outward journey to the Far East.

Elaborate gold, silver or silver-gilt thimbles, such as the one shown in the main image, were frequently given as gifts, and like ceremonial or tournament armour their function was probably more decorative than utilitarian. Elizabeth I both gave and received presents of thimbles and an inventory of her possessions records ‘a nedell case of cristall garnysshed with silver gilt, with two thimbles in it’. But there are numerous examples of gifts of thimbles in more humble establishments and the large amounts of domestic sewing that was required during the early modern period meant that they were regarded as a very acceptable present.  During the English civil wars sermons preached by Hugh Peter (1598-1660) even encouraged women to give small gifts of gold or silver to the Parliamentary army, a practice which earned them the sobriquet of the ‘Thimble and Bodkin army’ – quite literally a case of turning thimbles into armour.

JEC

Main image: A Nuremberg, silver-gilt thimble c.1577. A translation of the rim inscription reads: If you adorn your body and me, we are both honoured ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Further Reading:

• Mary C. Beaudry, Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing, (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2006)
• Sylvia Groves, The History of Needlework Tools & Accessories, (Country Life Books, London, 1968)
• Bridget McConnel, A Collector’s Guide to Thimbles, (Wellfleet Books, New Jersey, 1990)

The early modern period saw a vogue for dog skin gloves, which were highly praised due to the softness and flexibility of the leather. They could be worn by both men and women in all ranks of society. Thomas Dekker’s play If it be not good, the Diuel is in it (London, 1612) has the city water-bearers wearing them and the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583 - 1645) wrote an epigram on wearing a dog-skin glove that was perfumed with the musk of a civet cat. The account book of Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), kept between 1600 and 1602, recounts the purchase of gloves, including a pair made of dog skin for the sum of two shillings. An issue of Tatler for 1710 includes among the items in a cabinet ‘three pair of oiled dog-skin gloves’.

                The connection between the flayed and tanned skin of a dog and the real (and symbolic) animal itself is underlined by two letters written in 1594 by the Spanish exile Antonio Pérez. They were addressed to the sister and mother of  Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex: Penelope, Lady Rich, and Lettice Knollys. In both letters he attempted to curry favour and dog-skin gloves play a major part. In the letter to Penelope Rich, he laments his inability to provide her with dog-skin gloves that he suggests flaying himself instead for the gloves. Pérez links the faithfulness of dogs to his own fidelity to the earl's family, and the soft pliability of dog skin to his own, ending the letter with ‘The gloves are of dog-skin, although they are mine; because I consider myself a dog and (like a dog) may Your Ladyship keep me in faith and love at your service’. He signed it ‘Your Ladyship’s flayed dog’ (perro dessolado), and the letter in Spanish also plays on the similarity between his own name and the Spanish for dog. The same metaphors are used again in his letter to Lettice Knollys, which accompanied a pair of perfumed dog-skin gloves: ‘Lady, the fabric is of dog (skin), the animal praised among all others for fidelity. Of such I beg Your Ladyship to give me name and place in her grace and service. And I do not disdain it, for I have seen dogs in places very favoured by ladies. And when I am unable to be of any service, maybe my skin will be good enough for gloves’ (signed ‘Dog and Servant of Your Ladyship’).

                Gloves were a traditional and very popular gift in the period and Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones interpret these letters in the context of gloves as a sexual metaphor, as a replacement for the missing lover. However, Erica Fudge has emphasised the need to underline the fact that “in his use of the conceit of the dog-skin gloves Pérez is not only displaying his loyalty, he is also what we might term becoming doggish; he is being made canine”. In both letters Pérez is not just talking about any gloves but emphasizing that they are made of dog skin and allotting desired canine qualities to himself. The living faithful dog, skinned and tanned, seems to be still present in the gloves.

                The connection between dog skin gloves and fidelity appears as a literary motif elsewhere. In John Fletcher and William Shakespeare’s Two Noble Kinsmen, the ‘Second countryman’ grumbles after his Cicely does not turn up that ‘The next gloves that I give her shall be dog skin’ (Act 3 Scene 6). Presumably the faithfulness of the dog, disembodied as a gloves, will influence or change Cicely’s behaviour once worn.  The fact that these gloves were made of dogs, a species also kept as beloved pets, guard dogs and hunting hounds, did not go unremarked. The comic play The London chaunticleres (1659) has one character sniggering at the idea of the canine guardian of the Underworld being perturbed by the sight of them: ‘And how wou'd Cerberus take it, to see one come to Hell with a dog-skin pair of Gloves?’. Thomas Brasbridge’s 1578 Treatise of the pestilence even claimed that a glover in Oxford died of the plague (along with his entire family) due to his wife bringing into the house a dog skin, a case of dead skin touching living human skin and transmitting contagion.          

                The gloves were not only worn as a fashion item to cover the wearer’s hands but also were used cosmetically. The gloves would be worn at night, often in conjunction with a thickly plastered ointment on the skin itself, to soften hands.  Dr Walter Pope, a late seventeenth-century astronomer and translator of Miguel de Cervantes, added a line in his English version of El Amante Liberal not in the original Cervantes on ‘Dog-skin Gloves to lye in a Nights to preserve thy effeminate, white, soft Hands’ (Select novels the first six written in Spanish, London 1694). In Alexander Oldy’s novel The female gallant (London, 1692) in which one Philandra’s hands are described as  ‘exceeding fair, yet, now, by this white,---as--- (Ah! wou'd my Shirt, ay, or my Crevat, were as white!) the falling Snow, for she had us'd a peculiar Ointment, and lay in Dog-skin-Gloves, with her Arms extended over her Head all this while, unless when any Visitors came.’ And even in the eighteenth century the author Jonathan Swift satirises a women’s dressing room that includes puppy-water and ‘There night-gloves made of Tripsy’s hide, / Bequeathed by Tripsy when she died’.

                Apart from their fashionable and cosmetic implications, dog skin gloves could also be used for medical purposes. The English surgeon Richard Wiseman suggested wearing them as a preservative method against chilblains in order to ‘cloath the Parts warm, that the Pores may be open to give a breathing to the Humour to which purpose furred Gloves and woollen Mittens and Socks are to be commended, also Dog-skin Gloves for the poorer sort; the richer may have oiled Gloves’ (Severall chirurgicall treatises, London 1676).

                Dog skin gloves present us with an intriguing case study of trying to understand the connection between a living valued animal and its disembodied skin, stripped of flesh, but which could still retain its doggishness.

KWM

Further reading

•          Erica Fudge, ‘Renaissance Animal Things’, New Formations, 76 (2012) pp. 86-100
•          Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones, ‘Fetishizing the Glove in Renaissance Europe’, Critical Inquiry, 28: 1, Things (2001), pp. 114-132
•          Edith Snook, Women, Beauty and Power in Early Modern England: A Feminist Literary History (Springer 2011)

(and for more on puppy-water, see https://earlymodernmedicine.com/puppy-water-beautys-help/)

Images:

Credit line: © Victoria and Albert Museum. Tile, Netherlands, c. 1610-1640 (Museum number C.526:2-1923)

Often overlooked the humble fire screen protects skin from the despoliations of excessive heat and provides a point of decorative interest to the chimneypiece.

In 1611 Thomas Coryat gave an account of his meeting with the celebrated Venetian courtesan and beauty Margarita Emiliana, describing her as the ‘quintessence of beauty’, while on her cheeks ‘though shalt see the Lilly and the Rose strive for supremacy’. Coryat deplored the fact that Margarita’s perfect complexion was achieved through cosmetic rouge, but she was only conforming to northern-European notions of Renaissance-female beauty, defined by fair skin and smooth, unwrinkled cheeks suffused with a soft, rosy glow. The many treatises on beauty published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reinforced this trope, although they differed on the virtues of achieving it through nature or artifice. Nonetheless, excessively red cheeks from over-exposure to heat (either from the sun or indoor fires) was to be avoided as the primary cause of wrinkles and redness. 

Protecting skin in order to achieve this delicate, rosy balance required both cosmetic unguents and physical barriers. In Several letters between two ladies; wherein the lawfulness and unlawfulness of artificial beauty in point of conscience, are nicely debated (1701) the author urged his reader to protect her face ‘against Sun, Dust, Air, and Fire, by Masks, Fans, Scarfs, and Hoods.’ Protective clothing and accessories provided defence against the exterior elements, but simple fire screens and fans were probably the most common form of protection indoors (image 1). 

The addition of brick-built chimneys from the fifteenth century moved fires from the middle of a central hall to an outer masonry wall.  The introduction of smoke hoods created a more pleasant environment, allowing company to gather round a fire and turning the fireplace into the dominant feature of a room. Chimneypieces themselves became more elaborate, evidenced by surviving examples created by the court architect Inigo Jones for the Queen’s house in Greenwich in the 1630s, and those illustrated in engravings from Jean Le Pautre’s Chiminées à la Modern published in 1661. The cast iron fire-back often decorated in motif relief further improved fire efficiency by creating stronger radiant heat that projected out into the room. These innovations increased the ambient temperature but also created the need to protect facial skin from the fire’s reddening heat, and fire screens became a habitual feature of early modern household inventories.

Image 2: Linen panel with tent stitch embroidery using wool and silk thread showing scenes from the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis, ca. 1632 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Fire screens came in numerous shapes and sizes and were both stand-alone and handheld.  The earliest examples of freestanding fire screens were unpretentious constructions, made from circular wickerwork set into a wooden stand - an example of this dated to the early 1600s is found in Hardwick Hall. Given the combustible nature of their components it is unsurprising that very few of this variety survive. But almost any material could be used for covering screens. Simple ones were fashioned from worsted cloth hammered onto a wooden surround or hung from a ‘T’ shaped metal or wood frame. As these screens served the dual purpose of standing in front of the fire when it was not in use, in order to block downward drafts from the chimney, their decorative potential was quickly recognised. Extant examples reveal fire screens of gilt-embossed leather and fine samples of woven or embroidered cloth, depicting family heraldry and classical or biblical imagery (image 2).  

By the end of the seventeenth century the frame design evolved and smaller, ‘cheval’ fire screens were introduced, which consisted of a sliding panel on a wooden pole that could be adjusted to allow for a range of heights, and these often became the vehicle for small pieces of domestic embroidery.

Image 3: The interior of a china-shop, ca. 1680-1700, originally made as a fan leaf that was later extended to create a small-scale painting © Victoria & Albert Museum

Oriental fire screens were also highly prized, as their presence indicated that the owner had access to exceedingly desirable luxury goods, newly imported into London by the East India Company. The 1679 inventory of Ham House included a small Chinese screen, and several screens appear in the 1682 inventory of a ‘china-woman’ who supplied exotic goods such as porcelain and textiles to the court of Charles II. A surviving seventeenth-century painting depicting the interior of an imaginary shop dealing in Chinese exports goods reveals a wide range of luxury goods including fire screens of various sizes in red- and black-lacquered wood (image 3).

Image 4: Juliet holding up a fire-screen fan at the Museum of Leather Craft, Northampton

Folding or static hand-held fans provided individual protection that could easily be carried and quickly deployed to protect the owner from direct heat; however, there were also specific fire-screen fans. Randle Holme illustrates a pattern for a ‘hand-screen’, which he explained ‘is a thing made of crisped paper and set in a handle to hold before a ladies face when she sits neere the fire in winter tyme’. A similar fan is illustrated in a seventeenth-century wood cut depicting a salesman of protective goods.  He is wearing three identical hats, while hung from his belt is another hat and several fire-screen fans. In his left hand he holds up a fan and an inscription reads: ‘I have screenes if you desire to keepe your buty from the fire’, suggesting that this type of simple fire-screen fan could easily be purchased from itinerant peddlers. This form of fire-screen fan was in use for a long period and an example can be seen at the Museum of Leather Craft, Northampton (image 4).  Like their static counter parts, hand-held screens or fans became highly decorative - particularly in the nineteenth century when they were sometimes hung on either side of the fireplace or arranged on the mantlepiece (image 5).

The efficacy of cosmetic preparations to counteract wrinkles and redness was (and still is) debated - but prevention is always better than cure, and both free-standing fire screens and hand-held fans continue to be in use to the present day. 

Dr Juliet Claxton

Image 5: Handheld fire-screen fan designed by Christopher Dresser, ca. 1880 © Victoria & Albert Museum

Image 1: Late seventeenth-century fire screen, carved walnut frame with cross-stitch embroidery panel © The Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA 

Further reading:

• Peter Thornton, Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration in England, France & Holland, (Yale University Press, 1990).
• Aileen Ribeiro, Facing Beauty: Painted Women & Cosmetic Art, (Yale University Press, 2011).
• Avril Hart & Emma Taylor, Fans, (V&A publications 1998)
• Juliet Claxton & Evelyn Welch, ‘Chintz, China and Chocolate: The Politics of Fashion at Charles II’s Court’, in Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women (Amsterdam University Press, 2019).

The quotidian umbrella was once considered an exotic commodity primarily concerned with protecting the skin against sunburn.

Modern-day umbrellas are most closely associated with rain, but etymology reveals that the word originates from the Latin ombre meaning shade and they were principally used to protect and cool skin from the sun’s rays.  Umbrellas or parasols were used by ancient civilisations in both Asia and Egypt, but their general adoption in northern Europe dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, although they were popular in sunnier climates from a much earlier period. Montaigne commented on the use of umbrellas in Italy, and Thomas Coryate (Crudities, 1611) noted that:

And many of them doe carry other fine things of a far greater price, that will cost at the least a duckat, which they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellas, that is, things which minister shadowve to them for shelter against the scorching heate of the sunne. These are made of leather, something answerable to the forme of a little cannopy, & hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compasse. They are used especially by horsemen, who carry them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of the handle upon one of their thighs, and they impart so large a shadow unto them, that it keepeth the heate of the sunne from the upper parts of their bodies.

This specific arrangement is illustrated on a ceramic plate manufactured in Emilia, Italy during the seventeenth or eighteenth century (image 1), which shows a gentleman rider holding an umbrella in his right hand while his left holds the reins. Carrying an umbrella in this fashion was probably used on leisurely outings; it appears cumbersome to a modern rider, but early modern reins and bits gave the rider a great deal of control, which would make holding a sunshade in one hand an easy prospect.

Despite their presence in the Mediterranean, umbrellas were not popularized in northern Europe until Dutch merchants began importing them from Asia during the early part of the seventeenth century.  Early illustrations of umbrellas usually associated them with exotic or oriental provenance. An etching by Christoph Janmitzer (Nuremburg 1610) shows a putto riding a sea monster with an elephant’s trunk and holding an umbrella (image 2).  Despite their obvious practical application, however, the English remained suspicious, and umbrellas were initially regarded as effeminate or even a potential health hazard.  In Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) he cautioned that: they gathered the heate into a pyramid point from where it was cast down perpendicularly upon the head.

Image 2: Etching showing a putto riding a sea monster, Christoph Jamnitzer, Nuremberg, 1610, V&A.

In England umbrellas remained an exotic curiosity throughout the seventeenth century.  An umbrella was recorded in John Tradescant’s Museum Tradescantianum or Collection of Rarities located in south Lambeth from 1608-1662. In June 1664 John Evelyn described umbrellas as: fans like those our ladies use, but much larger, and with long handles, strangely carved and filled with Chinese characters. It is not until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that umbrellas regularly feature in either English literature or imagery, where again their exotic origin is emphasized.  In Dryden’s tragedy Don Sebastian, King of Portugal (1690) Antonio informs Johayma, the Mufti’s wife: I can carry your umbrella and fan your Ladyship, and cool you when you are too hot: in fine, no service either by day or by night shall come amiss to me.  A contemporaneous example of a chinoiserie decorative panel attributed to Robert Robinson shows a Chinese dignitary riding on a fish under an umbrella (image 3). This type of decorative fantasy by a European artist was highly unusual as it preceded the mania for chinoiserie by nearly 30 years, and reveals the exotic character ascribed to umbrellas in this period.

Image 3: Panel painting showing a Chinese Dignitary Riding a Fish, Robert Robinson, ca. 1696, V&A

Early umbrellas had a heavy wooden frame with baleen stents that needed to be dried carefully or the whalebone was liable to crack, rendering them useless in wet weather. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) makes himself an umbrella: I covered it with skins the hair outwards, so that it cast off the rain like a penthouse, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest – as a result heavy umbrellas were known as ‘Robinsons’.

The first lightweight, rain-resistant umbrellas were introduced into Europe in 1710 by the Parisian merchant Jean Marius. They were waterproofed by painting a coating of oil on to silk, although this was liable to shed when wet and stain clothing. John Gay’s Trivia or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716): Or, underneath th’ umbrella’s oily shed/Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread/Let Persian dames th’umbrellas rich display/to guard their beauties from the sunny ray.

In fact, the umbrella remained something of a rarity even at the end of the eighteenth century when in 1782 it was noted that Mr Jamieson, a surgeon, brought the first umbrella to Glasgow on his return from a trip to Paris. Modern, steel-ribbed, waterproof umbrellas were invented by Samuel Fox in 1852.

For examples of early umbrellas see: The Olive Matthews Collection, Chertsey Museum; The Fashion Museum, Bath; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Dr Juliet Claxton

Title image/Image 1: Ceramic plate, Italy, ca. 17th-18th century, Musée National De Céramique, Sevres.

Further Reading:

• William Sangster, Umbrellas and their History, (London, 1864)
• Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion & Fiction, (New Haven & London, 2005)

During the early modern period, it was very common to quarantine and disinfect goods shipped across the Mediterranean. Lazzaretti - preventive quarantine centres - were established from the fifteenth century onwards along the coast of the Italian and Balkan peninsula, and later France, forming a strategical system in the fight against the plague. Passengers and goods coming from infected or suspected lands (for example, Ottoman and German lands were considered particularly dangerous) were isolated and decontaminated in specific buildings using specific procedures. The need for disinfection varied according to the type of goods. Depending on the materiality of the surface, objects were declared “subject” to, or “susceptible” of contagion.

In early modern times, plague was believed to be caused by a combination of different conditions (that could be astrological, religious or linked to the local environment) and miasmata caused by humidity and rotting substances. Plague was believed to be spread through bad air and through the so-called ‘seeds of the disease’ that could be preserved on contaminated surfaces. Giovanni Gentili, Medical Officer of the Health Board in Livorno, listed in 1783 some of the features of the objects which could retain more easily the contagion: porosity, hairiness, coarseness, tenacity and viscosity. Another document from the Health Board in Genoa described vividly the characteristics of dangerous surfaces: ‘bloomy and crinkly outer shell … mushy, levelled, wrinkled and uneven and unclean bodies’, silk that is ‘frayed, with threads in relief’ and wood which was ‘old, worm-eaten, rugged, creased and uneven.’ Thus, textiles, raw cotton and wool, leather, fur, feathers, silk and paper were considered among the most dangerous items. On the other hand, smooth surfaces such as metal, wax, glass, china and polished hardwood were considered safe from contagion.

Susceptible goods were disinfected and handled in different ways according to their materials. The procedures were standardised across lazzaretti, which shared regulations in order to follow a consistent and safe way of dealing with potentially dangerous goods. In order to remove the ‘seeds’, the bales of textiles were opened, and each item exposed to air was piled up; the piled goods were then periodically turned. Scents, sulphur and smoke were also used to fumigate the goods while paper was sprinkled with vinegar. The picture here shows how bales of raw cotton were placed in the lazzaretto of Marseille on wooden racks in the open air in order to be properly ventilated. A similar procedure and layout were used for leather which was considered extremely dangerous and potentially contagious. Indeed, Gentili also stressed that processed and macerated vegetal and animal substances, above all if furry and porous, were among the most dangerous. Furthermore, leather was shipped mostly from suspected lands (Ottoman Empire and nearby areas) where plague outbreaks were always feared. As some types of leather were shipped wet, many lazzaretti had big open spaces and open sheds to spread out the goods for drying and ventilation.

Fur was also considered extremely subject to contagion and ventilated similarly to leather. However, not only pelts were disinfected in the lazzaretto but living animals too. Poultry, cattle and any kind of animal that was shipped across the Mediterranean (for instance, antelopes and ‘ferocious animals’) needed to be disinfected and quarantined. Poultry and small animals were commonly washed with water or vinegar. The lazzaretto in Ancona had a pool full of seawater especially for this purpose and for disinfecting less dangerous items. Animals were walked through the water and then released to the market. Feathers were another dangerous item commonly disinfected inside lazzaretti: the bundles of feathers were untied and then handled twice a day in order to ventilate them. However, they were considered so dangerous that the staff had to use waxed gloves, which were considered impermeable to the seeds of the disease. Indeed, waxed robes were commonly used during plague outbreaks to protect people in close contact with the sick, such as doctors and priests. Inside lazzaretti, waxed shirts were worn by staff when opening bales of goods. Human skin too was considered porous and permeable to the disease and needed to be protected.

Guest blog: Marina Ini, PhD candidate at University of Cambridge 

Image: Disegno del modo di Situare le Balle di Cotone, Biblioteca Biomedica di Firenze, Mss. 2.7.B, f. 101. By kind permission of the Università degli Studi di Firenze.