19.10.21

As I'm having a few days break from creating I started to think in more detail about some side ideas I've had specifically the idea of pairing 'smell vessels' with books relating to the smell. This came from wanting to somehow use 'Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management' in my work and wanted to create a smell based on the ingredients in the book and exude the smell of English cooking. While looking at some of the  other books I own to be influenced by I wanted to use 'Italian Painters of The Renaissance' by Bernard Berenson so I began to research smells of the Italian Renaissance. I struggled finding detailed and reliable sources of scents but I did come across the concept of perfumed leather gloves and the methods behind them and want to do something with this idea maybe introducing leather into my work. I also want to maybe look at the hand prints I was creating just before I started university as a jumping off point.

18th Century Leather Gloves

Perfumed Gloves

Perfumed gloves, also referred to as "sweet gloves", are perfumed gloves, often embroidered prominently used in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth-century. With the unhygienic atmosphere and odorous nature of a bustling sixteenth-century, the gloves worked to mask personal aromas. As an easily removable item, glove wearers could even change their ‘scent’ throughout the day by switching pairs. The gloves themselves could be perfumed with an array of fragrances, including pomegranate, orange blossom, jasmine, and violet. Instead of having these ingredients stuffed into the gloves though, they were mixed with animal fat and boiled. Then the gloves were dipped into the liquid and left outside to dry. Through this process not only did the scenting treatment serve to cover the unpleasant odours of everyday life but also done to mask the smell of the gloves themselves. Typically, fashionable gloves were made from leather, and animal excrement was used in the leather tanning process, to create the smooth texture of the finished product. Unsurprisingly this also produced a foul smell. Perfumed gloves continued to be in fashion though throughout the late 16th century and early 17th century as items of prestige and costly gifts. In England, Elizabeth I is credited with “inspiring the craze”. In France the tradition triggered by Catherine de Medici even continues to this day, with modern brands such as the House of Guerlain still producing perfumed gloves.