NAPLES YELLOW - Oxbow Books

Moths, from a
volume of drawings
commissioned by the
Bolognese naturalist
Ulisse Aldrovandi
(1522–1605), comprising
44 fi gures of insects, 8 of
quadrupeds, 9 of fi sh, and
26 of shells and minerals.
Aged 80, Aldrovandi
published a seven-volume
work, De animalibus
insectis (On Animal Insects).
60
Fondo Aldrovandi,
University of Bologna:
Tavole, Vol. 007,
Animali, f.127
Biblioteca Universitaria
di Bologna. Diritti di
riproduzione. Bologna.
Diritti di riproduzione
How to keep garments of cloth, or
hangings of tapestry, dornicks and say
from eating by moths
BRUSH YOUR APPAREL WITH AN ORDINARY BRUSH AND SIMILARLY
your hangings. Otherwise use a brush made from a fi g frail
[a basket made of rushes used to pack fi gs], until you have
got all the dust out of them. Then brush them thoroughly
two or three times a year as they hang, with a brush made
of wormwood tops. To be sure, rub the reverse side with
wormwood. I have heard that it is customary in summer
time amongst the Italians here to hang walnut-tree leaves on
threads, in such a way that none touches each other. When
thoroughly dried out, they strew them in their chests and
presses [linen cupboards], amongst their clothes and furniture
of their chambers and beds, and between the several folds of
every garment.
TEXTILES & CLOTHING
MOTH REPELLENT
Authors of books of secrets were acutely aware that tapestries and other hangings
were extremely vulnerable to the ravages of moths. Above, Sir Hugh Plat (see
p.55) in his Jewell House of Art and Nature advocates the use of wormwood to
protect them, following ancient authorities such as Pliny and Dioscorides. A
source read and heavily annotated by Plat, the Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont, which
he nevertheless criticized for publishing untested and overly complicated
recipes, reiterates this advice: ‘Take wormwood, or southernwood, the leaves
of a cedar tree, and valerian and lay them in your coffers or presses where your
clothes be, or in the pleats of your garments.’ But Ruscelli’s text also provides
a clear rationale for why these substances in particular were thought to be
effective: ‘These leaves and herbs are bitter of taste, and the savour or smell
is very strong, which the vermin do abhor and cannot abide.’ In Renaissance
Europe, textiles were often stored in cedar or cypress chests, since the natural
resins in these wood were known to be a moth repellent. Shakespeare alludes
to this practice in The Taming of the Shrew, when Gremio mentions ‘In cypress
chests my arras counterpoints’ (tapestry quilts).
From the last decades of the sixteenth century, new compilations of secrets
appeared in England, marketed as household recipe books, with a female
audience in mind. One such text was Plat’s Delightes for Ladies (1602). The fi rst,
though, was John Partridge’s Treasurie of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets
(1573). And this book includes a description of a ‘fumigation for a press and
clothes that no moth shall breed therein’. The recipe calls for a powder made
of cypress wood, juniper, dried rosemary, storax, benzoin and cloves,
combined with a powder from wormwood leaves. These
ingredients were to be set on coals in a chafi ng dish.
TEXTILES & CLOTHING
Tapestry (detail).
Wool and silk, Flanders,
c.1540–55. This
immense tapestry was
woven for the Italian
humanist Paolo Giovio,
and once furnished the
Palazzo Giovio in Como.
Tapestries were usually
reserved for special
occasions and stored
in protective canvas
bags to help preserve
them from damage.
V&A: 256–1895
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