Saturday, April 30, 2022
15C Mythical Goddess Flora - Symbol of Spring
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
The expression came into popular modern use in the 1960s & is a rephrasing of a sentiment found in an autobiography written by the golfer Walter Hagen: “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”
Mythical Gardens - Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
Friday, April 29, 2022
Mythical Gardens - Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden by Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) & His Workshop
Paradise Gardens usually depict the biblical Garden of Eden, often referred to as “paradise,” a word that evoked the notion of an untouched & primal landscape, or pleasurable space in a lush landscape of greenery. Cranach, who was a close friend of Martin Luther, worked at the court of Saxony.
Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
17C Spring Allegory with Flowers & a Garden by Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677
Wenceslaus Hollar was born in 1607, the son of an upper middle-class civic official. Very little is known about his early life, but he evidently learned the rudiments of his craft by age eighteen, left his native Prague at age twenty, and likely studied in Frankfurt under Matthaus Merian. His first book of etchings was published in 1635, in Cologne when Hollar was twenty-eight. The following year he came to the attention of the renowned art collector the Earl of Arundel who was making an official visit to the continent, and Hollar subsequently became a part of his household, settling in England early in 1637. He remained in England during the beginning of the English Civil War period, but left London for Antwerp in 1642, where he continued to work on a variety of projects. In 1652 he returned to England, working on a number of large projects for the publisher John Ogilby and for the antiquary Sir William Dugdale. Hollar was in London during the Great Fire of 1666, and remains most famous for his scenes of the city before and after the fire. He was one of the most skilled etchers of his or any other time, which is all the more remarkable given that he was almost blind in one eye. Hollar died in London on 25 March 1677. By his life's end, he had produced some 2700 separate etchings.
Mythical Gardens - God Creating Eve - Illuminated Manuscripts
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
17C Time to Stop & Smell the Flowers
Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania
Mythical Gardens - Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
The Garden of Eden, Paradise Garden, The Temptation of Adam and Eve (detail) in Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women, about 1415, Boucicaut Master. J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 63, fol. 3 Adam & Eve are surely not alone as they are tempted & expelled in this enclosed garden hortus conclusus.
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Native American Plant Myths - Hunting & Using Ginseng
Ginseng, which is sold in large quantities to the local traders, as well as used in the native medical practice, is called âtali-gûli', "the mountain climber," but is addressed by the priests as Yûñwi Usdi', "Little Man," or Yûñwi Usdi'ga Ada'wehi'yu, "Little Man, Most Powerful Magician," the Cherokee sacred term having its origin from the frequent resemblance of the root in shape to the body of a man. The beliefs and ceremonies in connection with its gathering and preparation are very numerous. The doctor speaks constantly of it as of a sentient being, and it is believed to be able to make itself invisible to those unworthy to gather it.
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
17C Personification of Spring with a Garden! by Wenceslaus Hollar (Czech artist, 1607-1677)
Wenceslaus Hollar was born in 1607, the son of an upper middle-class civic official. He left his native Prague at age 20, and likely studied in Frankfurt under Matthaus Merian. His 1st book of etchings was published in 1635, in Cologne, when Hollar was 28. The following year he came to the attention of the art collector the Earl of Arundel who was making an official visit to the continent, & Hollar subsequently became a part of his household, settling in England early in 1637. He remained in England during the beginning of the English Civil War period; but left London for Antwerp in 1642, where he continued to work on a variety of projects. In 1652, he returned to England, working on a number of large projects for the publisher John Ogilby & Sir William Dugdale. Hollar was in London during the Great Fire of 1666, & remains famous for his scenes of the city before & after the fire. He a skilled etcher, which is remarkable given that he was almost blind in one eye. Hollar died in London on 25 March 1677. By his life's end, he had produced nearly 3000 separate etchings.
Mythical Gardens - Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden - Illuminated Manuscripts
In Western iconography the early Christian garden is usually defined by the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, the original lovers thrown out of paradise for tasting forbidden fruit, and cast into the wilderness to define their own lives & gardens. Before the Western printing press, illustrated manuscripts and early depictions of landscapes in portrayals of Biblical gardens give a glimpse of gardens familiar & imagined during the periods the images were created. Gardens are often mentioned in the Bible. In the language of the Hebrews, every place where plants & trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open field, was called a garden. Fruit & shade trees, with aromatic shrubs, sometimes constituted the garden; though roses, lilies, & various gardens were used only for table vegetables, Genesis 2:8-10 15:1-21; 1 Kings 21:2; Ecclesiastes 2:5,6.
Genesis 2:8 “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed...And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."
Monday, April 25, 2022
Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania
Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
God Creating the Birds and Animals in the Garden of Eden Vatican Library Collection
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
Mythical Gardens - Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania
Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
Friday, April 22, 2022
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
17C Woman Holding A Fan by Abraham Bosse (French, c 1602-04–1676)
Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
Genesis, The Creation of the Animals. Oxford MS. Douce 135 fol-017v Here the garden is filled with trees & birds.
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania
Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
French illuminated manuscript, Image du Monde, attributed to Gautier de Metz, portraying God creating animals and birds; Harley 344, folio 1. British Library
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Earth's Creatures Stop to Smell the Flowers
Spring & Summer are the perfect time to celebrate the rebirth of Earth's Beauty & Bounty. Flowers gave beauty & inspiration to mankind's basic struggle to live & to populate & to protect his home-base, The Earth. Holding on to The Sweet Divine - The Lord God took man & put him in the Garden of Eden to work it & to keep it...Genesis 2:15.
The expression came into popular modern use in the 1960s & is a rephrasing of a sentiment found in an autobiography written by the golfer Walter Hagen: “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”
17C Spring by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677)
Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Trade Routes between Europe & Asia during Antiquity
Trade Routes between Europe & Asia during Antiquity
The Silk Road, a series of ancient trade routes stretching across Central Asia to Europe, evokes exotic images of camel trains laden with bales of fine Chinese silk, spices, and perfume;, of desert oases surrounded by snow-capped mountains; of bustling markets thronging with travelers buying and selling grapes, coriander, Baltic amber, and Mediterranean coral. The silks & spices & incence evolved as ancient mankind experimented with the products of Nature. Along this route, silks were sent from China to ancient Rome; princesses were dispatched in marriage alliances across the deserts; bandits and thieves launched attacks throughout history. Spanning more than 5,000 years, the Silk Road was more than just a trade route, the Silk Road witnessed the movement of Man's cultural influences intermingled with Nature's changing landscapes.
Some areas had a monopoly on certain materials or goods. China, for example, supplied West Asia & the Mediterranean world with silk, while spices were obtained principally from South Asia. These goods were transported over vast distances— either by caravans & pack animals overland, or by seagoing ships—along the Silk & Spice Routes, which were the main arteries of contact between the various ancient empires of the Old World.
Another important trade route, known as the Incense Route, was controlled by the Arabs, who brought frankincense & myrrh by camel caravan from South Arabia. The demands for scents & incense by the empires of antiquity, such as Egypt, Rome & Babylon, made Arabia one of the oldest trade centers of the world.
Cities along these trade routes grew rich providing services to merchants who rested in oasis towns (known as a "caravanserai"). These centers served as international marketplaces, & areas where knowledge was also exchanged. Cities such as Palmyra & Petra, on the fringes of the Syrian Desert, flourished mainly as centers of trade supplying merchant caravans & policing the trade routes. They also became cultural & artistic centers, where peoples of different ethnic & cultural backgrounds could meet & intermingle.
The Medieval Spice & Incense Trade with an Allure & Mythology dating back to Antiquity
The Medieval Spice Trade Newberry Library by Sarah Peters Kernan
How were spices used by medieval Europeans, & why were spices so valuable in medieval Europe?
Spices were an important commodity in the Middle Ages with an allure & mythology dating back to Antiquity. Spices were expensive & a sign of status in the Roman Empire. They were consumed in large quantities by the wealthiest citizens. Like many other goods, spices were easy to transport because of safe & maintained routes controlled by the Romans. When the Empire fell, local powers took control of routes & travel became more difficult as these entities engaged in war, embraced different religions, & neglected maintenance of old Roman roads. As a result, for several centuries in the early Middle Ages, people in Western Europe lacked consistent access to spices.
After religious crusaders tasted the cuisines of the Middle East in the high Middle Ages, they renewed a widespread European interest in spices for culinary & medicinal applications. Merchants procured a wide range of spices for consumers, including pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, & saffron, as well as the now-obscure spices like grains of paradise & spikenard. Sugar was also used as a spice during the Middle Ages. Spices again became revered luxury items & status symbols across Europe. European merchants sought out spices from Asia, traveling dangerous routes through the Middle East & Africa. Traders were faced with many challenges, including physical danger & constant economic strain from local tariffs & taxes. Because spices were from distant lands & European consumers had no direct access to their sources, stories about spice origins flourished. Contemporary authors recorded myths about pepper trees guarded by serpents & cinnamon requiring harvest from nests of fantastical birds built on perilous cliffs. These legends only added to their mystique & justified their expense.
Muslims controlled all routes of access to spices in the East from Europe. This presented a challenge for Christian & Jewish traders from the West, as there was perpetual tensions & outright warfare between Christian & Muslim powers. Muslims dominated not only land routes which spanned across the Middle East & northern Africa to Pakistan & western India, but also maritime routes throughout the Indian Ocean. In 1453, Italian merchants were largely forced to stop trading spices through combined land & sea routes. In that year the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, a city at the convergence of all land routes to the spice centers of the East, & began levying prohibitively expensive tariffs on goods transported through the city. In an effort to find new seaways to Asia, kingdoms sponsored exploratory expeditions. Some explorers discovered new water routes to China & India, re-opening trade of spices & other goods, while others claimed land & resources in the New World.
Luxurious Consumption
Throughout the Middle Ages, spices were a status symbol & sign of luxury. Only the wealthiest could afford large quantities of spices to use for culinary purposes. Meals in noble households were ostentatious affairs, even small & relatively private meals. Consider what spices do in a cooked dish: they color food, flavor food, & make food more aromatic. Spices, then, enhance the senses of sight, taste, & smell. In the context of a medieval meal, especially a feast intended to impress guests, spices played a major role. Fountains flowing with spiced wine might be installed in or near a great hall; this lavish service of wine would scent an entire room with spices like cloves, grains of paradise, ginger, & cinnamon. Nearly any dish, whether roasted, stewed, or baked, could include an impressive array of these imported spices. In one image of a meal from a 15C prayerbook, two wealthy diners share a private meal. They are being served a pie, which in the Middle Ages consisted of a meat or fish mixture baked in a decorated pastry crust. This mixture would undoubtedly include many spices. The exterior of the pie would often be brushed with a wash with saffron, a remarkably expensive spice made from the hand-picked threads of crocus flowers, turning the finished dish into a gleaming, golden work of art.
Wealthy Ancient Romans used spices copiously in their foods, a tradition that continued for many more centuries...Pepper & cumin were the most common combination , & the chicken dish also includes spiced wine as another ingredient. While the dishes of the cookbook De re coquinaria fell out of favor in medieval Europe, the cookbook was still copied by manuscript scribes & was printed several times during the Renaissance.
Spices were not solely culinary ingredients; they were also used for their aromatic properties in perfumes & incense. In a time when bathing was infrequent, streets were not paved, & animal dung was a constant presence, pleasant aromas were highly valued. For example, frankincense & myrrh were prized for their aromas. Additionally, these spices were closely tied to the Christian tradition. In images of the three kings visiting the newborn Christ Child on Epiphany, the close of the Christmas season, frankincense & myrrh are presented as gifts equal to gold.
The Value of Spices
The value of spices was determined not only by their taste & status as luxury items, but also their medical properties & the fantastic legends attached to their production. Spices were believed to have important medical qualities; spices were ingredients in medieval pharmaceuticals. Apothecaries, the medieval equivalent to pharmacies, were stocked with supplies of spices which were then carefully mixed with other spices, minerals, & animal products to create an array of medications to be ingested by or applied on a patient. Medieval & renaissance writers devoted many pages to the benefits of spices, including the excerpts which describe cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, & pepper.
Some spices were legitimately difficult to harvest. Musk, an oil from the scent glands of a Central Eurasian deer, & ambergris, a waxy substance produced by the digestive system of the sperm whale, were 2 such spices. Others, however, were more easily procured. Yet merchants assigned bizarre stories to other spices to heighten their value for European consumers. Since most people in the medieval West had no contact with the Far East & the actual origins of spices, these myths persisted for centuries. The two most notable of these are tied to pepper & cinnamon. Pepper was said to be guarded by serpents which had to be chased away by fire. This fire turned fresh, white peppercorns into black, wrinkled spices...Cinnamon had a similarly wild story. Merchants claimed that a mythical bird called a Cinnamologus made nests out of cinnamon sticks in Arabia. These nests were built on perilous cliffs, & people had to drive the birds from these nests in order to harvest the cinnamon. Platina refers to this myth in his description of cinnamon, below.
A Profitable Venture
Spice merchants could reap enormous profits, but they also faced dangerous journeys to procure their goods. Whether traveling by land or sea, they faced perils like pirates & raiders, religious & political conflict, & accidents like shipwrecks. Traders furthermore faced financial strain to move spices from Eastern points of trade to Europe. Whenever spices were transported through different kingdoms or points of trade, merchants had to pay steep tariffs. Depending upon the spice, merchants could charge 50 or 60 percent more in Europe for the spices they bought in the Middle East. Some contemporary accounts state that merchants charged 100 percent more. However, a majority of the markup was due to tariffs, leaving traders with a smaller profit, even as little as 10 percent.
Spices entering the European market were typically transported through Venice. This city was located in a prime location in Mediterranean. It was relatively easy to access major gateways to Eastern trade routes like Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey); Aleppo, Syria; & Alexandria, Egypt. From the eleventh through the 15C, Venetian merchants ruled the European spice trade. As a result, Venice became an extremely wealthy & powerful city. Such a wealthy city attracted the most talented artisans to produce innovative architecture, artwork, & music.
By the late Middle Ages, thousands of tons of the most common spices were imported into Europe annually through Venice. The value of these spices was approximately the value of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people. In 15C England, a pound of pepper cost more than two days’ wages by a skilled London craftsman. A pound of cloves cost nearly five days’ wages, while a pound a saffron cost one month’s wages. Prices varied throughout Europe & fluctuated over time, but the general idea remained the same: spices were a very expensive ingredient in medieval Europe.
Changes in the Renaissance Spice Trade
Italian traders were forced to significantly reduce trade in spices via combined land & sea routes through Constantinople in 1453. In this year, the Ottoman Empire, an Eastern superpower, conquered the city. Since Constantinople was located on major east-west & north-south trade routes, the Ottomans could charge restrictively high taxes on all goods bound for the West.
Because Europeans were denied access to spices though Constantinople, kingdoms began to sponsor the exploration of new routes to India to directly obtain spices. Portugal & Spain, however, were the first to make significant headway. The Portuguese had already begun to explore northern Africa earlier in the 1400s. So, they quickly set out on a possible sea route to India around the southern tip of Africa. Bartolomeu Dias first crossed the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, & in 1497, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape, continued to the eastern coast of Africa, & sailed across the Indian Ocean to Calicut in south India. At long last, Europeans had direct access to Indian spices without the intervention of Arab traders. By the beginning of the 16C, the Portuguese had complete control of the African sea route. Other explorers attempted alternate routes to India by traveling westward. Christopher Columbus, an explorer for the Spanish crown, was the first of these explorers to reach the New World in 1492 traveling this route, mistaking the Bahamas for the East Indies.
Over the following centuries, consumption of spices declined. Yet they still remained an important commodity. The Dutch struggled, & eventually succeeded at the turn of the 17C, to wrest control of trade from the Portuguese by establishing the Dutch East Indies Company. The British East India Company, a direct competitor, was founded at around the same time. The goal of these companies was all the same: to establish direct trade with Indian spice producers & keep tariffs as low as possible.