HERB - Pomanders & Scents

[Jenne Heise]

On Fri, 20 Nov 1998 Seton1355 at aol.com wrote:
> This sounds great!  Do you have a *recipe* for doing this?
> Phillipa
> > ve just gotten started on creating pomanders... Is anyone else on the
> >  list doing this? I mean the resin or wax pomanders, 

<Typing furiously>

Well, I made my first ones last night (I'm beginning to think that people
agree to teach classes to have an excuse to buy cool new supplies), based
on wild extrapolations from the few notes I have (mostly from the recipes
cited in Jeanne Rose's Herbal, and Rosetta Clarkson's _Magic Gardens_
[note: yes, I do have other books; Clarkson's is just the most
comprehensive...], as well as The English Housewife and a few other
works.)

Recipes I started from:

[Quoted in Jeanne Rose's Herbal:]
'A Comfortable Pomander for the Brain'
Take Labdanum, one ounce, Benjamin and Storax of each two drams, Damaske
powder finely searced, one Dram, Cloves and Mace of each a little, a
Nutmeg and a little Camphire, Musk and Civet a little. First heate your
morter and pestle with coales, then make them verie cleane and put in your
labdanum, beate it till it waxe softe, put to it two or three drops oil of
spike, and so labor them a while; then put in all the rest finely to
powder, and work them till all be incorporated, then take it out,
anoynting your hands with Civet, roll it up and with a Bodkin pierce a
hole thorow it."		Ram's _Little Dodoen_ 1606.
 
[Note: labdanum is a resin obtained from the cistus or rock rose. It
apparently may be the same stuff sold as 'amber resin'.]

Markham's _The English House-Wife_ has some too, but I can't lay my hand
on it right now. One recipe from it is quoted in _Magic Gardens_:
"To make Pomanders, take two penny-worth of Labdanum, two pennyworth of
Storax liquid, one penny-worth of calamus Aromaticus, as much Balm, half
a quarter of a pound of fine wax, of Cloves and Mace two penny-worth and
of Musk four grains: beat all these exceedingly together, till they come
to a perfect substance , then mould it in any fashion you please, and dry
it."

If people are interested in more recipes, I'll post them as I find them.

Note: if you are interested in making these, you'll want to figure out
what sort of cases you want to put them in. They were kept in cases of
pierced metal or wood and used as jewelry, because in the raw they kind of
look like, well, turds. *grin*

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa (Shire of Eisental; HERMS Cyclonus), mka Jennifer Heise	
jenne at tulgey.browser.net

"Healing the universe is an inside job." 



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