@bryonycoombs.bsky.social and I have been making ink @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social historical reconstruction lab. My v. easy 1555 recipe is from Alessio Piemontese’s Secrets - it involves wine, very Italian - and made pretty good ink, even with my Scottish galls. Can’t wait til our workshop!
Was so great, am ridiculously pleased with the ink!
Some really instructive (& fun) ink making experiments with @jillburke.bsky.social this afternoon in prep for a forthcoming ink & quills workshop. Scottish, English or Aleppo oak galls: which makes the best ink? we will tell you after the workshop! 😉
Many experimental ideas in the pipeline ✍️📜🍃
Beauty recipe books – both manuscript and printed – crystallised as a distinct genre in sixteenth-century Italy, going on to be translated, adapted and plagiarised in many European languages. Usually explicitly aimed at a female audience, they largely consisted of compilations of recipes dealing with multifarious issues that affect the appearance – from hairstyles to scabies, from fatness to athlete’s foot. Long treated as a marginal element of the ‘book of secrets’ tradition, recent research has shown they make for fascinating reading, giving us insight into intimate worlds of anxiety about appearance and the everyday health concerns thought to mar attractiveness. This talk takes three complementary approaches. Analysis of dedicatory letters and verses show sometimes surprising ways in which cosmetic knowledge and practice were framed, and offers evidence for how authors imagined their readership. Text mining of several thousand recipes reveals recurrent beauty problems, as well as the range of ingredients, techniques and equipment expected from diverse users. Finally, an evaluation of the plentiful readers’ marks on around 80 copies of Giovanni Marinello’s Ornamenti delle donne (Venice, 1562, 1574 and 1610) suggests how readers actively engaged with the texts, the identity of readers and owners, and which recipes drew the most attention.
I'm giving a talk! It's online for ePublic of Letters, on “Why were beauty tips so popular in sixteenth-century Italy? Readers, Makers and Realms of Knowledge in Early Modern Cosmetic Manuals". April 15th, noon eastern U.S., 5pm UK, 6pm continental Europe. RSVP here: forms.gle/DNLMPQuBGcEi...
So so pleased to see that my book ‘Body Size in Early Modern Germany’ is now available on Oxford Academic ahead of its print publication later this month: academic.oup.com/book/62409
🎉🎉🎉
To mark its online publication, I thought I’d share a bit more about the book and its contents...
@jillburke.bsky.social, Christine Ott and I also have a co-edited volume 'Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe' coming out later this year with @routledgehistory.bsky.social which looks at fatness in various European settings including a couple of contributors who touch on England.
Interested in environmental history? The IHR is offering a summer 2026 internship with the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). Apply by 15 April 2026, 11:59 pm BST. More details at: buff.ly/Vzpz6G3.
The ERC-BROKENSONG project at Maynooth University, Ireland, is hiring (two positions - this is the second)! I'm also looking a new research assistant/postdoc to conduct image analysis of the medieval Insular music corpus recovered within the project. See: www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/list...
Ah one of my former PhD students, Pigi Sakellaropoulou, wrote about recreating the walks of 16th c plant hunter and artist Gherardo Cibo. Very cool.
'I would set off, with some sense of what I might be looking for, and see what I stumbled across...'
Is going for a walk a valid methodology for a historian? And if so, how much theory do you need to read before you start?
Some thoughts in my latest blog post:
manyheadedmonster.com/2026/02/10/i...
Women wore a bra already in the 15th century!
Amazing discovery. Also: I highly recommend the book “How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity” by @jillburke.bsky.social 📖🌟💄
Yes they were! Lots of links between cosmetics, poison, love magic and witchcraft in the inquisition record
Still (just) time if you’re looking for a Christmas gift for someone who likes history/art/make up 😉
Thank you!
Such a great project, was a real pleasure to hear more about what people are up to!
Phew: another output for the PTAS project ✔️
A really stimulating afternoon discussing experiential learning, heritage in education, recipes, historical fashion, pedagogy & so many exciting projects currently underway. With massive thanks to @jillburke.bsky.social for a fabulous keynote✨
Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Robert B. Woodward, 1915
We are offering up to £10k for researchers to seed collaborations, feasibility studies, application advice and training, partnership building etc for applications to Pillar 2 of Horizon Europe – Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...
Nice!
The first to realise that gall wasps came from an egg was Swammerdam in 1669 (Redi dissected thousands of galls and concluded reluctantly that gall wasps generated spontaneously). He drew this picture of a wasp laying an egg. janswammerdam.org/Images/gall....
Wow!!
Oak gall wasps are my current obsession - galls are a key ingredient in European writing inks before industrialisation.
Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp.
Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s
The Renaissance changed how people saw and understood the body. Cultural and art historian @jillburke.bsky.social @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social explores fashion and everyday life in Renaissance Italy, reflecting on the surprising history of bras in medieval times: www.joinexpeditions.com/experts/4582
Can vouch that was completely spontaneous!
Have you heard our recent BBC You’re Dead To Me episode about Renaissance Era Beauty Trends? It’s very funny, and I got a historical makeover!
My guests are fab comedian Tatty Macleod and brilliant expert historian @jillburke.bsky.social
Available on all podcast apps worldwide
📣Are you a #histmed scholar whose book proposal belongs in our Social Histories of Medicine series?
The @sshmedicine.bsky.social Annual Book Development Prize Competition is open for submissions!🥳
Secure £2,000 in funding to help turn your idea into a published monograph or collection! Details👇
'The study...found that the main driver of increased red tape was university efficiency reforms. It threw doubt on the idea that increasing automation results in real efficiency, and suggested that Australian universities...had recently shifted towards stronger central executive management.' 1/2
Was SO delighted to hear this just now! 😊
GRW-Rima! As we hear about nails, 16th century beauty treatments, and the value of care. With @jillburke.bsky.social @gregjenner.bsky.social @samiraahmeduk.bsky.social @cmatbaby.bsky.social and more. 1815 on R4 or afterwards on BBC Sounds. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
Thanks Charles!
