[Sca-cooks] Paper twists of spice (Was spice storage)

[Johnna Holloway]

The paper wouldn't necessarily have come from a book. At least
in England during this period there were any number of broadsides
(definition: Broadsides--printing on one side of a single sheet of paper)
 being printed and distributed. These could be anything from
proclamations to legal notices to scandalous songs and ballads.
They advertised plays, boats leaving for the New World, sermons, etc.
They could very well have been used by a merchant to wrap up a small
purchase for a housewife or servant. The other possibility that comes to 
mind
is that it could be discarded paper from a mistake or trial run at a 
printer.
(How many sheets do I waste at times today trying to get the xerox to copy
what I want in the format, darkness, size, etc. that I want?) What was done
with discarded paper? One images that some was recycled into more paper
possibly, but is it outside the realm of possibility that the thrifty 
Dutch would
not have used in some other fashion?

Johnnae


Huette von Ahrens wrote:

>Printing or decoration?  Someone could have painted the shell or carved it.  Perhaps it is
>a piece of stiff cloth or decorated leather?  I know that I am grasping at straws, but I am
>having a hard time with the concept that someone desecrated a book to wrap spices in paper.
>::Shudder::
>When this painting was done in 1612 or so, printing was becoming more common, but would someone
>really have torn out a page of a book to wrap spices in it?  I can see the Victorians doing that. 
>I have actually held in my hands a Victorian era law book that was falling apart.  Someone had cut
>up a vellum illuminated manuscript and pasted a strip of it onto the spine to cover up the
>stitching.  I wanted to cry.  But would a 17th Century spice merchant have done that? 
>
>Huette [once an librarian, always a bibliophile]
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