Лако-красочные материалы — производство

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an explosion in world exploration. It had been preceeded by the Italian Colombus’s voyages

to the Americas, with John Cabot the Englishman close on his heels. Verrazzano searched for a Northern Strait (1524-1528), whilst Cartier too plied the coast of North America (1534-1536) in search of riches.

Queen Elizabeth’s master mariners (Gilbert, Frobisher, Drake and Raleigh) trawled the seas in search of treasure for her coffers, whilst Magellan and da Gama probed the southern seas.

All of this marine activity brought back many new aroma products to the tables and laboratories of Europe, and increased the supplies of existing ones. And at the other end of the voyage the alchemists were waiting to add to their store of knowledge.

Court alchemists included Giordano Bruno (Henry III of France, 1551-1589), John Dee (Elizabeth I, Charles I) and Joseph Duchesne (Henry IV of France, 1553-1610).

Bruno was an early atomist, writing on The Principles, Elements and Causes of Things (1590), whilst Andreas Libavius in 1597 developed the study of alchemy in two directions, encheiria, the manipulation of materials, and chymia, the preparation and classification of chemicals. Biringuccio wrote of fireworks (1540, Pirotechnia), Agricola of metals (1556, De Metallica), Neri of glass manufacture (1612, L’Arte Vetraria), and Robert Fludd (1574-1637) covered nearly everything in his manifest works.

Meanwhile, Paracelsus (1493-1541) worked on distillation to sepa­rate the ‘essential’ from the ‘non-essential’ parts of a compound, and developed further the quinta essentia (quintessence) theory of a fifth element, involved in imbuing life. His radical ideas greatly influenced medicine during the Renaissance. According to Paracelsus, God makes

medicine, but not in a prepared form. In nature, medicine is found compounded with ‘dross’, which must be taken away by distillation, setting the medicine free. The process became refined.

It was at the end of the seventeenth century that the German Johann Kunckel discovered how to use gold chloride to manufacture ruby glass, and also how to ‘strike’ red (a re-heating technique to develop the colour).

In 1573 Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, brought Elizabeth I not only scented sachets, but also perfumed gloves and jerkins. Entranced, Elizabeth, the Queen who had ‘a bath every three months whether she needed it or no’, became a fragrance enthusiast and the use of fragrances gradually became de rigueur in court.

Around this time the first books and manuscripts describing perfum­ery techniques surfaced, and court perfumers took the stage. A contemporary of Elizabeth, Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) travelled to France to marry Henry II, and in her entourage were two skilled artisans, Tombarelli and Renato Bianco, skilled in the crafts of perfumes and poisons, since court intrigue mixed affairs of the heart with affairs of the sword. Diane de Poitiers, a rival of Medici, was said to dabble herself in philtres, potions, perfumes and poisons. Nostrada­mus, the personal astrologer of Catherine, was known to inhale smoke and incense as part of his preparations for prophesying. As a plague doctor, Nostradamus used rose petal pills as a palliative and part herbal remedy for bad breath and cleaning teeth. The recipe for these pills included red roses picked before dawn, sawdust from fresh green cypress, iris, cloves, calamus, tiger lily and aloes. His second wife, Anne Ponsard Gemelle, was famed as a maker of herbalized perfumes.

Throughout the ages, perfume has provided a pathway to happiness; like happiness itself, the odours are intangible and often fleeting. History is littered with examples of the famous and their perfumed preferences: Henry III was said to have fallen head over heels in love with Mary of Cleeves after breathing the odour of her just removed clothing. Henry IV of France was reputed to smell so ripe that his intended, Marie de Medici (1573-1642) keeled over when she first met him, while Henry himself, revelling in his own natural odour and those of others, once reputedly wrote to his mistress Gabrielle d’Estree, ‘Don’t wash my love, I’ll be home in eight days’. The French kings and their courts greatly indulged the use of fragrance, Louis XIII favouring neroli, based on orange blossom, whilst his chief adviser Cardinal Richelieu had the fragrant scent of flowers ‘bellowed’ through his apartments. Louis XIV, the Sun King, with his mistress Madame de Montespan, compounded his own fragrances, whilst

Louis XV lavished wealth on ‘La Cour Parfumee’ (the Perfumed Court) with his mistresses Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, where even the fountains did not escape a fragrant dousing. Eventually the Madames of France, ending with Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI (1774-1793) paid for their indulgence in meeting another Madame: the guillotine.

Meanwhile, over in England, Charles I (1600-1649) had Nell Gwynne as fragrant advisor, whilst Charles II (1630-1685) was encouraged in the aromatic arts by Catherine of Braganza. Perfume rings, filigree pomanders and vinaigrettes gave new ways to perfume the air, much needed since the strong smell of valerian musk and civet was more desirable to the lack of personal hygiene which existed at the time. The animalic link to humans had also been made, as instanced by this sage advice of a Mr Wecker in his Secrets of Art and Nature:

If any man would provoke a woman, let him sprinkle his Gians with Oyl, Musk or Civet, Castoreum or Cubeba, or any of these, for these so quickly provoke.