Jessamy gloves

 Jessamy gloves are perfumed gloves, more specifically they are gloves perfumed with the scent of
jasmine. The art of perfuming gloves appears to have become popular in Italy in the 16^th century, there are many legends around this crediting either René le Florentin, who perfumed gloves for Catherine de Medici, or Muzio Frangipani, a man whose existence cannot even be proved. The fashion seems to have been brought to England by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford who, on his return from Italy in 1575, presented Queen Elizabeth with a pair of perfumed gloves, John Stow says that for many years this scent was known as the "Earl of Oxford's perfume”. (Stow & Howes, 1631) John Florio’s work, also published in the 1570s, gives translations into Italian of many phrases to use when purchasing gloves in Italy, for example; “These Gloves, are they wel perfumed,” “‘Who hath perfumed them,’ and ‘I will haue them perfumed.’ (Florio, 1578)

Many different perfumes could be used, not just jasmine, Evelyn refers to “Gloves trimm'd, and lac'd as fine as Nell's. Twelve dozen Martial, whole, and half, Of Ionquil, Tuberose, (don't laugh) Frangipan, Orange, Violett, Narcissus, Iassemin, Ambrett.” (Evelyn, 1690) Martial was Louis XIV’s personal perfumier and his gloves were purportedly sold for 30 sous a pair. By 1656 the perfuming of gloves was so common that Louis XIV granted a guild patent, Les Statuts des Maitres Gantiers Parfumeurs.

The giving of perfumed gloves as gifts at weddings, funerals and other special occasions was common in the seventeenth century. When James I visited Cambridge University in 1615, he was presented with “a fair pair of perfumed gloves with gold laces.” (Cumming, 1982) The mother of a groom to be writing about the need to give gloves as presents at the wedding wrote in 1611 that, “I could not get so many women’s Jessamy gloves as wrote for; and at the last was fained to pick upon cordinant [cordovan leather] for men and perfumed kid for women. I had them perfumed better than ordinary that they might give consent.” (Duggan, 2011)

Perfumed gloves could be purchased in England for between 2s 6d and 4s. (Robertson, 1883) The perfuming could be done, or renewed, by the use of pastes, often referred to as butters, as for example “3 Ounces of Jessimy-butter..and 6 pair of Jessimy-Gloves.” (Duffett, 1675), or by the use of powders. In 1655 James Master paid, “for a pound of jessamin pouder and a pa of white gloves 6s 6d” (Robertson, 1886). It may be that the butter and paste were used to perfume leather gloves, and the powder for fabric gloves, but that is conjecture.

Books were published with instructions on how to create and use such perfumes. In 1696 Simon Barbe’s work was translated into English and published as The French Perfumer, it included sections on how scent gloves, part of which is quoted below. (Barbe, 1696)

“The manner of Preparing and Perfuming Gloves.

Clean and Wash your Skins as you have done before; cut and sew your Gloves, then Colour them as you please; if you will Perfume them with other Perfumes, do it before you Perfume them with Flowers, as you'll find hereafter; being thus prepared, put them in a Box, lay in a Bed of Flowers and a Bed of Skins, continue so doing till you have no more Gloves nor Flowers; let them lye in the Box till the next day, for 24 Hours at most, then take them out, dry them in the Air upon a Line for an Hour; rub them after that well, open them and turn them, cover them again with fresh Flowers on the wrong side of the Skin; continue so doing on both sides four or five Days; then rub them, and prepare them again, they will be well Perfum'd. You must Perfume once or twice the Paper you beat them in, lest it should lessen the smell.

 The Gloves and Skins you Perfume with precious Perfumes, as Amber, Musk, and Civet, will be well Perfum'd without any Flowers.

 How to Perfume Gloves or Skins before you Perfume them with Flowers.

Grind on a Marble Stone with a Muller, a Gros (or the eighth part of an Ounce) of Civet, with two or three Drops of Essence of Orange-flowers, or other Flowers made of Ben Oyl, being well mixt together, drop to it a little of Millefleur-water, then grind alone as big as a Small nut, Gum of Adragant dissolved with Orange▪flower-water; after that mix your Civet, dropping a little of the Millefleur-water; continue so doing till it is all well mixt together, then put your Composition in the Mortar; pour more Water in it, stirring it till it is reduced to a quarter of a Pint; then lay your Perfume very even on your Gloves with a Spunge, dry them in the Air upon a Line; being dry, rub them, open them, and Perfume them with Flowers as before.

 Perfumes made with Musk.

Grind upon a Marble Stone two Gros of Musk, with three Drops of Essence of Flowers, as before, and being well mixt, let them lye on the corner of the Marble; then grind half a Gros of Civet, with a few Drops of the same Essence, lay it on another corner of your Marble; then grind as big as a Nut Gum of Adragant dissolved with Millefleur-water, mixt with three or four Drops of Essence of Amber; after that mix them all together very well with the last Water, dropping it gently; and when the whole is well mixt with the Water, put it in a Mortar, pouring more Water, and stirring it with the Pestle, till it is reduced to half a Pint; then rub your Gloves and Skins, and let them dry.”

References

Barbe, S., 1696. The French perfumer teaching the several ways of extracting the odours of drugs and flowers and making all the compositions of perfumes for powder, wash-balls, essences, oyls, wax, pomatum, paste, Queen of Hungary's Rosa Solis, and other sweet waters .... London: Printed for Sam. Buckley.

Cumming, V., 1982. Gloves. London: Batsford.

Duffett, T., 1675. The Mock Tempest; or, the Enchanted Castle.. London: s.n.

Duggan, H., 2011. The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Evelyn, J., 1690. Mundus muliebris: or, the Ladies dressing-room unlock'd, and her toilette spread. In burlesque. Together with the Fop-Dictionary, compiled for the use of the fair sex.. London: Printed for R. Bentley.

Florio, J., 1578. Firste Fruites which yeelde familiar speech, merie prouerbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings. Also a perfect induction to the Italian, and English tongues, as in the table appeareth. The like heretofore, neuer by any man published. london: Thomas Dawson, for Thomas Woodcocke.

Robertson, S., 1883. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 1, 1646-1655], transcribed by Mrs Dallison.. Archaeologia Cantiana, Volume 15, pp. 152-216.

Robertson, S., 1886. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 2, 1655-1657], transcribed by Mrs Dallison.. Archaeologia Cantiana, pp. 241-259.

Stow, J. & Howes, E., 1631. Annales, or, a general Chronicle of England; begun by J. Stow ... continued and augmented ... unto the end of ... 1631, by E. Howes.. London: Printed by A. M. for R. Meighen.

Ironing and laundry rooms

Ironing room in Doll's house c.1676. Rijksmuseum

Washing clothes, doing the laundry and ironing is such a basic occupation. Queen Elizabeth had a “Brusher of our robes,” as wool and silk clothing is difficult to launder, however she also had laundresses who were paid for washing and starching linens, both for linen clothing and specifically a “Laundres for the Quenes majesties table stuffe.” (Arnold, 1988)  Only slightly lower down the social scale in the Earl of Salisbury’s accounts there are payments made to Bettres Hickman who’s bill survives and charges 6d per week for eight weeks washing, starching, smoothing and perfuming the shirts, bands and aprons of Tony, one of the servants in the kitchen, who warranted this special service because he was at that time “absent about his eyesight.” (Munby, 1986)

Sometimes in other households accounts there are references to items being washed. In 1648 James Master pays “for washing and mending my linnen 2 weeks &c 4s 8d” (Robertson, 1883), and when the LeStrange family visited London in 1620 they paid “for a woman for washing 1s and for soap 2s”, when at home they had their own wash house. (Whittle & Griffiths, 2012)

Sometimes even silks could be washed and ironed. Hannah Wooley’s The compleat servant-maid of 1677 describes how to wash and iron sarsenets, this is specifically aimed at sarsenet hoods. Once they are washed she says to “draw them between your hands every way till they be little more than half dry, then smooth them with good hot irons the same way you did wash them, and upon the right side of the sarsenet.” Black sarsenets on the other hand should be “iron'd upon the wrong side and on a woollen cloth.” (Wooley, 1677)

 

Laundry or wash rooms

Stately homes might well have rooms specifically used for laundry. The Household inventories of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk give a flavour of these, though the term laundry is not actually used until the 1708 inventory. In the 1597 inventory the room, described as the “outwarde dairie” has 3 great brass kettles, 2 dyeing pans, 1 washing tub, 1 bucking tub (a  bucking tub was used to soak linens in a lye of wood ashes), 1 washing keeler (a keeler is a shallow tub) and 14 pails. By the 1626 inventory there are two bucking tubs and a bucking keeler, plus “one lowe foure footed stoole for the buckeinge tubb”, and one “heareinge lyne hangeinge,” that is a line to hang the linen on. As mentioned before the LeStrange family in Norfolk also had a wash house which, in 1675, contained three lead cisterens for water, the accounts record the purchase of both bucking tubs and rinsing tubs. (Whittle & Griffiths, 2012) The use of lye for bucking was common, though in a work, originally published in French in 1698, Henri Misson commented that, “At London, and in all other Parts of the Country where they do not burn Wood, they do not make Lye. All their Linnen, coarse and fine, is wash'd with Soap.” (Misson, 1719)

 Ironing or linen rooms

 In the 1626 Helmingham inventory there is a separate “dryeing chamber,” which has two “heareinge lynes”, 3 wicker baskets to carry linen in, a linen press and a “suffering presse to drye lynne on.” In the 1708 inventory there is also a “horss to hang linen upon” and four smoothing hand irons. (Coleman, 2018) The use of the term horse, as in clothes horse seems to first appear in the mid sixteenth century, where it is described as, “An instrument in an house whereon garments and other things be hanged.” (Cooper, 1565) Three surviving late seventeenth century Dutch doll’s houses, two in the Rijksmuseum, one dating from c.1676 and one, the house of Petronella Oortman from c.1686-1710, and one in Utrecht Museum, all have linen or ironing rooms. Above right is the one in Petronella Dunois’ house c. 1676. This room has an ironing table or board upon two trestles, with an ironing blanket to put the linens on whilst ironing them, a box iron, wicker baskets of the type in the Helmingham inventories, and above the doll’s head, wooden poles to carry the drying linens.

Pressing irons

When being made clothes were pressed, using a pressing iron, the better-known term today, sad iron, does not appear until the eighteenth century. (OED). The term pressing iron for this sort of solid iron appears as early as 1343 in the Reading Abbey Tailor's Compotus (BL Add. 19657). Another term is smoothing iron, as the Helmingham inventories. In 1574 among other things provided to Elizabeth’s Office of the Wardrobe of Robes was “one pressinge iron,” others followed in 1580, 1594, and later.  (Arnold, 1988)

 Box irons

Box irons are hollow and designed either to hold charcoal as the heating element, or to take a solid heated slug of iron, as John Evelyn put it , “a thick piece of Yron, such as Laundresses use to put in their Smoothing boxes”.(Diary, Oct 8^th 1672) The image left is of a surviving box iron in the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen, it is dated 1635 and is German, the decoration around the outside depicts a hunting scene, and the handle is ivory. The box iron in Petronella Dunois’ house is of brass with a wooden handle and has its own stand, the whole thing being only 3.5 cm high, image below.  

 References

Arnold, J., 1988. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. Leeds: Maney.

Coleman, M., 2018. Household Inventories of Helmingham Hall 1597-1741. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for The Suffolk Records Society.

Cooper, T., 1565. Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae. 1st ed. London: In aedibus quondam Bertheleti, cum priuilegio Regiæ Maiestatis, per Henricum VVykes.

Misson, H., 1719. Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England. London: Printed for D. Browne, A. Bell, J. Darby, A. Bettesworth, J. Pemberton.

Munby, L. M., 1986. Early Stuart Household Accounts. Ware: Hertfordshire Record Society.

Robertson, S., 1883. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 1, 1646-1655], transcribed by Mrs Dallison.. Archaeologia Cantiana, Volume 15, pp. 152-216.

Whittle, J. & Griffiths, E., 2012. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household. Oxford: OUP.

Wooley, H., 1677. The compleat servant-maid; or, The young maidens tutor. London: printed for T. Passinger, at the Three Bibles on London Bridge.