Chats on Household Curios

by Fred. W. Burgess

Perfume Boxes and Holders.

Perfume has always been associated with the requisites of the lady's toilet. Sweet-smelling spices are referred to in biblical records, and even to-day the offering of perfume is a symbol of honour to the guest in the East; and some very beautiful Oriental scent sprinklers and spice boxes are now and then met with among Eastern curios. The long-necked rose-water sprinkler is the most common form, supplemented by betel-nut boxes and receptacles made by Persian artists for the famous attar of roses. Scents and "sweet odours" became fashionable in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; articles of clothing were scented, and there was a profusion of scent for the hair and in making the toilet.

The pomander box, the favourite perfume holder of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of England, was in the form of an apple, the perfumes and spices being made up like a ball. It is said that the perfume was prepared from a sixteenth-century recipe, the basis of which was sweet apples or apple pulp, and scented gums and essences. From the pomander box smaller receptacles were evolved, and more elaborately prepared scents were kept in them. Some of the preparations consisted of camphor, mint, rosemary, and lavender in vinegar, a piece of sponge being saturated with the liquid. Then came the use of aromatic vinegar, and gradually beautiful little silver vinaigrettes were introduced. Many of them were very ornamental in shape, highly decorated with miniatures and floreated embellishment, the monogram or name of the owner often being added. In the outer case was usually a cover of perforated gold which closed over a piece of sponge, upon which aromatic vinegar or some similar preparation was poured. The best vinaigrettes are those bearing the hall-marks varying from 1800 to about 1840, when the making of vinaigrettes declined and other scents took their place.

The burning of perfumes in bedrooms and the fumigation of wardrobes and chests by means of a fumador was a custom much resorted to by Portuguese ladies in the eighteenth century. Sweet lavender is still used in the linen cupboard, although its use was much more general in the days when London street cries were heard.

Dressing Cases.

When people travel and visit their friends their luggage includes among other things a dressing case, for there are many toilet requisites which are of a personal character, and cannot well be substituted by others. It is true that the need of portable dressing cases has increased of late years owing to greater travelling abroad. Dressing cases, however, are by no means modern, for some very beautiful examples with silver-topped bottles, hall-marked in the days of Queen Anne, are among the collectable curios. There is a still older example in the Victoria and Albert Museum—a case of tortoiseshell, filled with a complete toilet set, consisting of four combs and thirteen toilet instruments, partly of steel and partly of silver. It is an historic case, having been presented by Charles II to a Mr. T. Campland, who is said to have at one time sheltered him. Many old families have interesting and valuable examples, and not infrequently isolated cut-glass bottles with Georgian hall-marked silver tops which have formed part of the equipment of dressing cases are met with.

Scratchbacks.

Old English scratchbacks are among the rarities of the curios associated with the toilet table. It is unnecessary to comment upon the habits and customs of those periods when scratchbacks were found necessary, or to refer to the hygienic conditions of the toilet then conspicuous by their absence. It is sufficient to allude to these curious little instruments, mostly shaped like a hand, often of ivory, and always fitted with a handle in length from 12 to 15 in. The hand in some cases is large in proportion, measuring as much as 2½ in. in length, sometimes as an open hand, at others with the fingers closed, often very beautifully modelled. Horn and whalebone were favourite materials for the handle, although some were of ebony and other woods. Scratchbacks appear to have been made both in lefts and rights in this country; but the scratchbacks of the Far East were invariably rights. The accompanying illustrations, Fig. [65], show the usual types of these now obsolete toilet requisites, which it may be noted were sometimes duplicated by miniature scratchbacks carried about on the person, hung from the girdle.

Toilet Chatelaines.

The chatelaines worn by the ladies of olden time were bulky, and the various objects deemed necessary to carry about the person rendered them cumbersome in the extreme. A bunch of keys was always in evidence, and a glance at a few old keys indicates how large the keys of even quite small boxes were in olden time. There were the keys of the store cupboard, of the linen chest, and of the larder and the wine cellar. Drawers and cupboards and boxes, as well as the bureau or desk, were always locked, and to deliver up the keys was indeed to surrender one of the privileges of the matron and housewife which were jealously guarded.