SC - Platina and setting a tabley

[Jenne Heise]

> If you take into account the health of various folk and still want to give 
> the illusion of the period effect, I might suggest you only supply the 
> perfumes at the entrance to the hall-outside the door.  For folks like me 
> who have asthma, perfumed air would prevent me from remaining in the hall 
> long enough for the first course.

I don't see how that would give any illusion whatsoever, and I also don't
see how it could avoid being a problem for those with asthma.

> I know this is my personal perspective, but trust me here, there are many, 
> many of us with this problem.  Too often this health hazard is overlooked.  
> I can only say this:  Asthma Kills.  It is an awful thing to make the 
> motions of breathing in deeply and nothing happens.

One of the major worries I've had is that when I teach a class on herbs
and spices I bring herbs, spices, and some fragrant and essential oils,
and I have to be very careful to have a space that can be separated from
the rest of the area and can be aired out. Obviously, when I'm not working
with 'fragrance' oils, which are artificially produced, the risk is
somewhat less, as many more people have a reaction to synthetics than
essential oils. But after the many warnings I've heard from asthmatics,
sometimes I feel like just putting up a biohazard sign whenever I'm
working with herbs at all!

I think if you want to perfume a hall, you need to post that, clearly,
and not do it anyplace where people might be forced to come. My guild had
talked about providing strewing herbs for court, but someone pointed out
that such, if walked on, would release an essential oil that might cause
people with an allergy to react. Right now, I'm sort of kicking myself for
the scented handwaters I put out at the Athena's Thimble dayboard, as one
of them had clove oil in it. Hopefully it wasn't enough (only a few drops)
to be a problem for anybody, and I heard no complaints, either for that or
the water with rosewater in it or the stuff with sage tea in it. 

To answer the hypothetical question, though, musk, civet, frankincense,
rose, ambergris and other heavy scents seem to have been regarded as
perfumes in period. A lot of modern people find those heavy scents
objectionable-- they had their heyday in the Elizabethan era.
 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker