Beard-haters, face-painters and eyebrow-abusers: the dangerous fashions of “Man transform’d, or, The artificial changeling” (1653)

Those of us who have been left bemused by the sudden rise of high-street botox booths, tanning shops, nail salons and eyebrow bars can take some comfort from this curious work by John Bulwer which suggests that, even as far back in 1653, people have always been astonished at the lengths to which some would go to transform their bodies in the name of fashion.  

In Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d, or The Artificial Changeling, Bulwer’s aim, according to the full title, is to expose the “mad and cruel gallantry, foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy fineness, and loathsome loveliness of most nations, fashioning & altering their bodies from the mould intended by nature”.  Bulwer describes in detail how people around the world artificially modify their appearance, noting that every nation has a “particular whimzey as touching corporall fashions of their own invention.”

Painter-stainers and auricular bravery

The book is divided into 23 sections covering all types of body modification and decoration, including tattooing, lip-piercing, binding, scarring, cosmetics, ear-piercing, and eyebrow shaping. Sections are accompanied by numerous woodcut illustrations contrasting ancient with modern or Old World with New.

“Eye-brows abus’d contrary to nature.”

In an appendix, The pedigree of the English gallant, the author looks more closely at how fashions in England have been influenced by practices in  remote parts of the world. Although containing a strong element of social commentary, Bulwer’s work can also be considered one of the first studies in comparative cultural anthropology. He is rarely directly critical of primitive peoples; rather, Bulwer uses the universal nature of body modification to demonstate similar behaviours of humans everywhere (Anthropometamorphosis literally meaning “humanity-changing”). Bulwer may view some practices of remote tribes as laughable or barbaric, but no more laughable or barbaric than those of the ‘civilised’ world.

Beard-haters of the world

The influence of indigenous peoples on Tudor cod-piece fashion?

Man Transform’d was Bulwer’s final book. A physician by trade, he chose to return to his calling as a pioneer of communication with the deaf, having previously published the first treatise on sign language, Chirologia: or The naturall language of the hand.

“Among those whoe corrupt and deforme the face some account musicians that play upon wind instruments.”

“Was it not the same conceit that the Macrones of Pontus … once had, among whom they were esteemed the best gentlemen who had the highest head?”

New for 2012/13: SCOLAR Lunchtime Workshops

This year, SCOLAR is offering a pilot series of lunchtime workshops on subjects relevant to a range of disciplines. Workshops on illustrated sources and women’s studies will run this autumn, with sessions on historical travel literature and World War One sources in the spring. The workshops are intended to raise awareness of the breadth of material available to support research in these areas, and as a general introduction to using Special Collections and Archives.

The first workshop on illustrated sources will be led by Assistant Archivist, Alison Harvey. It will introduce a range of illustrated material from the SCOLAR collections, including literary, scientific, medical, and women’s periodicals and miscellanies, newspapers, children’s literature, art and architecture, novel, plays and poetry, travel literature, ballads and almanacs, and prints, posters and propaganda.

Workshops will be held in Special Collections and Archives, on the lower ground floor of the Arts and Social Studies Library, Corbett Road, Cardiff. The illustrated sources workshop is scheduled for 12-1pm on 22 November, and will be repeated at 1-2pm on 23 November. Places are limited, so if you would like to attend either session, please email HarveyAE@cf.ac.uk, stating your preferred time.

Download a copy of the workshop poster

A well-used book: marginalia and manuscript notes in an early 16th century herbal

This early herbal forms part of our Continental collection and was published in Paris around  1520. Our copy of Herbarum varias qui vis cognoscere vires (‘Various types of herbs that you want to know the powers of’) has been extremely useful to its previous owners and virtually every page is covered with detailed manuscript notes, observations, lists of ingredients, recipes and other marginalia.

Herbals, from the medieval Latin liber herbalis (‘book of herbs’), contain the names and descriptions of plants with details of their medicinal or culinary properties, often with illustrations to assist with proper identification. These books were among the first literature to be produced in both the East and the West and continued to flourish long after the invention of moveable type in the mid 15th century. We have several other early printed herbals in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection but none have been quite as well used as this one!

By Oak, Ash & Thorn

In times of austerity one’s imagination can often be the key to making a dream become reality.  In 1928 Geoffrey Higgens, honourary secretary of the Brighton based Apollo Arts Club, shocked at the prices of printing presses decided to construct his own – from a piece of oak, a tombstone and a flat iron!  He published the club’s magazine, The Delphic, and called it  The Oak, Ash & Thorn Press.  It is possible this name originated from Kipling’s story ‘Weland’s sword’ from Puck of Pook’s Hill which was published in 1906, where the line ’by oak, ash and thorn’ appears.

We only have a couple of items from this small press, one of which is a collection of six hand printed rhyme sheets in a decorated folder.  Only 5o copies were printed.  Each sheet is decorated with one main illustration above the poem, and one smaller vignette at the base of the sheet.  The woodcuts were by Geoffrey Higgens himself, as were two of the poems; the others being by Maurice Elford and Kathleen Moore.  A mixture of styles and themes, it is Tripedence by Mauric Elford that stands out for its glorious use of nonsense words.

Tripedence by Maurice Elford

Peace in the candle shop hugs
The mysterious blan of fendestuous sequins
(Hooting with nargic distribulancy)
Till the toll of the tull tells tales
Of Sharness in sibisticism.

Science and sea monsters

This wonderful fish is from Cardiff’s exceptional copy of De Piscibus libri V, et de cetis lib. vnus by the 16th century Italian naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi. It is one of nearly 400 full page woodcuts of fish, sharks, whales, dolphins … and sea monsters!

Aldrovandi (1522-1605) was a student of the universities of Bologna and Padua, completing his degree in medicine  in 1553. By then, however, he had developed a strong interest in botany and zoology, and in 1561 Aldrovandi became Bologna’s first professor of natural sciences. He was a leading figure in the Renaissance movement that sought to place a renewed emphasis on the study of nature through direct observation.

Aldrovandi was one of the first great specimen hunters and regularly organized expeditions in search of exotic new items; in the course of his life he would assemble one of the most acclaimed cabinets of curiosities in Europe. These private collections of fossils, minerals and rare plants were the forerunners of modern natural history museums and Aldrovandi’s cabinet eventually comprised some 18,000 specimens, many of which he described in the thirteen volumes of his greatest work, Storia naturale.

Although he described his own observations with considerable accuracy, Aldrovandi passed along his share of misinformation, often displaying what the naturalist Buffon would later describe as “a tendency towards credulity”. If a previous writer had described an unusual creature, he considered it only polite to mention it, no matter how improbable the beast appeared. Our copy of De Piscibus, the fifth volume of Aldrovandi’s Natural history, features numerous monstrous serpents and fanciful oddities alongside the more familiar marine life.

Despite these occasional flights of fancy, Aldrovandi’s work represented a great advance towards science based on observation. He arguably did more than any other to establish zoology and botany as fields of study and came to be regarded by later scholars such as Linnaeus as the ‘father of natural history studies’. High praise indeed for the man who once observed of stingrays that they “love music, the dance and witty remarks”!

Private press books in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection

Woodcut title of "The tale of Beowulf" with gothic lettering designed by William Morris. Published in 1895 by the Kelmscott Press as a limited edition of 300 copies.

We have just started the enviable task of cataloguing SCOLAR’s extensive set of beautifully printed and finely bound private press books. The Cardiff Rare Books Collection contains several thousand of these works, produced by fine presses such as the Kelmscott Press, Essex House Press, Golden Cockerel, Ashendene and Doves Press. Many smaller British presses are also represented in the collection, as is the work of private presses in Europe and the United States, with examples from the Bremer Presse in Munich and the New York’s Harbor Press.

Walt Whitman's "Song of the Broad-axe" with woodcuts by Wharton Esherick (Centaur Press, 1924)

The private press movement flourished at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in 1890 with the founding of the Kelmscott Press by William Morris. An offshoot of the Arts and Crafts movement, which advocated fine craftsmanship and high quality materials over mechanized mass production, the private presses produced books using traditional printing and binding methods, with an emphasis on the book as a work of art as well a source of information.
Morris himself was greatly inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts and the Kelmscott style of fine presswork was to have considerable influence on the work of later presses such as Ashendene and Doves.

Pages from "The tale of Beowulf" (Kelmscott Press, 1895)