Introduction

Textiles were expensive in the early modern period. This meant that taking care of them was a priority in the household.¹ Clean clothes were important not only because of personal hygiene and health but also because they conveyed an image of a respectable citizen, tradesperson and upright Christian. An English conduct book from 1619, for example, insisted that ones’s clothes should be kept neat and clean ‘For spotted, dirty, or the like, / is lothsome to be seene’.²

Textiles had to be cleaned with care. Since most garments, apart from linen, could not be washed without damaging the natural dyes or the finishing, there were a range of methods for cleaning textiles without immersing them in water, including stain removal, surface cleaning and re-dyeing.³ In addition, it was also common to use perfumes on clothes and bodies to prevent bad smells.⁴ This practice seems to have been important also among artisans. In 1646, the coppersmith Gabriel, who resided in Elsinore in Denmark, had in his bedchamber a green box, with some ‘bathing herbs’, which could have provided a scent both pleasant and therapeutic.⁵ The Italian tailor Piero di Giovanni from Florence, also wore a perfumed pendant, which made him smell clean.⁶

But how were clothes in fact refreshed, stains removed and clothing perfumed? Could this be done at home or did artisans have to take their clothes to tailors or professional cleaners in order to keep them clean? These were some of the questions explored at the workshop ‘Dirty Laundry’, organised by the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project in April 2019. The aim of the workshop was to recreate some of the recipes for taking care of clothes that were circulated in cheap printed advice manuals and collections of recipes in the early modern period. As we carried out the experiments, we tested, for example, whether lemons or chanterelle mushrooms could be used to remove stains from silk. Would scented rose petals make the artisans’ linens smell like those ‘of a great lord’?

The workshop, held over two days, offered many new insights into the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cleaning practices and gave a better understanding of how artisans, local shopkeepers and others from modest economic conditions could make their precious clothes last longer.

The experiment

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, instructions on how to clean textiles and clothing were widely disseminated in Europe in printed collections of recipes and advice manuals. For instance, the Danish advice manual Maangehaande artige kunstner, published in 1578, included recipes on how to use ‘water’ to remove stains from gold embroidered cloth and velvet, how to clean stains from precious silk fabric, and how to remove spots of wine from woollen cloth.⁷ Since these recipes, like so many other recipes in Europe, were published in cheap printed media, is it possible that such instructions circulated also among ordinary artisanal families? Could people like the Florentine butcher Della Cara, who owned a pair of breeches in taffeta defined as ‘nasty’, apply such instructions at home?⁸

For the experiments, we selected three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cleaning recipes that appeared repeatedly in cheap and easy-to-obtain texts and pamphlets.⁹ Such books were intended for use at home. They feature terse instructions and call for ingredients that were relatively easy for people to obtain, some of which may have even been growing in domestic gardens and pots. We followed the instructions closely to find out how well these popular recipes actually worked, using silk, linen and woollen fabrics which were stained with ink, red and white wine and oil.

First, we tried a very simple Italian recipe designed to remove stains from white wool or linen using lemon juice.¹⁰ We found that if the stains were fresh, applied on the fabric just before treating them with lemon juice, the results on white wool were pretty good. On the set stains, on the other hand, the recipe did not seem to work. In addition, the results showed that treating the fabric with lemon juice could easily destroy the colour. The red on linen dyed with cochineal turned hot pink when rubbed with lemon juice (Figure vii.1).

Second, we tested a Danish recipe for removing stains from precious silk, using chanterelles. As the first step, the recipe advised to ‘take the top of the small mushrooms, which are called pfiffereling’ (chanterelles). Second, it was advised to soak the stained fabric with the mushrooms for two hours; the fabric should then be rinsed with clear water and left in the sun to dry.¹¹ Because no instructions were given on how the fabric should be soaked with the chanterelles, we decided to boil the mushrooms first with water to make a paste (Figure vii.2), and then apply it on to the stains. Then it was rinsed with water. Perhaps this was not the right method, because the recipe did not seem to work. Instead, especially the ink discoloured the silk samples, making the stains even worse (Figure vii.3).

Figure VII.1 A piece of stained linen treated with lemon at the ‘Dirty Laundry’ workshop, organised by the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project at Aalto University in 2019.

Finally, we tested an Italian recipe which promised to wash a scarlet wool and remove stains using boiled cream of tartar. As the first step, the recipe instructed to ‘Boil white tartar powder in water so that it reduces by a third and then strain it and when you put it on the cloth, make sure the water is tepid and let it dry and when it is dry it will return to its colour’.¹²

This recipe was tested on samples of wool dyed with madder, kermes and cochineal and stained with white wine, oil, red wine and ink. This stain remover was probably the least clear since, it did not mention how much tartar powder or water should be used. Ultimately 50 g of tartar powder was boiled in 400 ml of water, the water was reduced by one-third and was then drained (Figure vii.4) There were lots of discussions about whether to use the water or solid portion left after boiling, and how much of the solution should be applied to the cloth. In the end, we decided to try both, but neither one of the recipes was particularly successful, yet it appear that using the water made better results, since the ink seemed to spread to other areas of the fabric and rubbing the fabric with a small linen cloth and solid portion of tartar powder damaged the cloth and made the dye come off. Neither as a stain remover was it effective; however the cloth stained with ink, became lighter, which suggest that could be used to make very dark stains lighter. Depending on where the stain was, this would have been useful to make one’s finest red garment last longer.

Figure VII.2 Chanterelle mushrooms soaked in water.

Figure VII.3 Results of the sixteenth-century Danish chanterelle stain-removal recipe.

Figure VII.4 Ingredients for a sixteenth-century Italian cleaning and stain-removal recipe.

After testing these stain-removal recipes with limited success, we decided to turn to perfume. Several early modern authors claimed not only that perfumes provided garments with a pleasing scent but that herbs could also protect clothes from vermin. A household calendar, published in Denmark in 1648, advised that ‘if you want to protect your clothes from mosquitoes, cloth worms, moths and other alike, smear this [anis] oil on all sides of the chest’.¹³ Some of the instructions were explicitly directed at ordinary families. Simon Paulli, a Danish doctor, botanist and anatomist, who recommended numerous remedies in his herbal book published also in 1648, was writing for the ‘common man’, in order to prevent moth and worms from eating and harming clothes. Adding scented herbs to chests of clothing, such as dried origanum (also mentioned as wild marjoram), mentioned by Paulli, protected the clothes from vermin and provided the clothes and the wearer with a ‘clean’ smell.¹⁴ Being able to protect their clothes was probably a serious concern for artisanal families, for several artisan inventories mentioned garments that were ‘moth-eaten’. For example, in 1592, a Danish woman was paid 22 skilling to sell two moth-eaten gowns that had previously belonged to Morten Mortensen, a son of a glazier in Elsinore.¹⁵

A recipe written by an anonymous sixteenth-century Italian author promises to make clothes smell like the ‘scent of a great lord’. According to the instruction, the desirable scent could be obtained by mixing ingredients such as rose petals, rosewater, root of white lily, ground cloves and musk.¹⁶ We mixed rose petals, rose water, orris root, synthetic musk, white ginger lily oil and cloves in a pot, and, after boiling and stirring the mixture, the blend was put into handsewn linen pouches (Figure vii.5).

The result was very fragrant. I stored the linen pouch in my wardrobe and got a first-hand experience of what perfumed clothes worn in the early modern period might have smelled like. At the same time, while some of us thought the smell was pleasing and others found it slightly repulsive, we were wondering how early modern Italians would have experienced such a scent in an urban environment where the air was full of strong odours from cattle, horses, smoke and strong perfumes.

Figure VII.5 A reconstructed perfumed linen bag.

Conclusion

How does recreating recipes for stain removal and scents help us to understand some of the practices that ordinary artisan families experienced when taking care of their clothes? Experiencing the past through early modern practices of cleaning, one quickly understood the extensive effort as well as the great challenges that were associated with keeping clothes clean and presentable. The experiments suggested that stains were not easy to remove, and recipes for stain removal and cleaning were often unclear and imprecise. At the same time, the experiments provided a unique insight into the kind of practical fashion knowledge that even ordinary people might have had access to through cheap print – a topic that is hard to trace in this period given the low levels of literacy, especially among artisanal women.

Finally, one of the most fruitful dimensions of the experiments was that they helped us to formulate new questions. For example, it is not clear that, even if ordinary artisan families had access to such recipes through cheap print and the ingredients required, individuals of lower social rank could read the instructions. Was such knowledge shared and transmitted between family members and neighbours in the period so that even the illiterate had access to these, or were these manuals restricted to a smaller audience, or used by the broader population at all? Such questions remain unanswered.