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

[Huette von Ahrens]

But if you look at the painting again, you will see decoration, but no lettering on both
sides of the piece.  Perhaps it is a piece of vellum from an illuminated manuscript from
a "Catholic" book of hours.  A good Protestant might not think twice of desecrating something
Catholic.  I know that there was some pretty bad smashing of statuary and art works during
the Reformation struggles. This painting was done on the eve of the Thiry Year War.

Huette

 
--- Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu> wrote:
> 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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Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for 
they shall never cease to be amused.


		
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