The Common Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing, and Alchemy

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985955%3A_____%2F23%3A00583344" target="_blank" >RIV/67985955:_____/23:00583344 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The Common Technical Vocabulary of Perfumery, Dyeing, and Alchemy

Original language description

My narrow aim in the lecture is to suggest that familiar translations of perfumery-related terms are often misleading and cause us to miss connections between perfumery and arts I am calling Venerean, by which I mean the arts of producing (not digging up) luxury goods, especially dyeing clothes, production of artificial precious stones and metals. I focus on the case of stypsis. Stypsis is usually translated into English as ‘thicken’ in perfumery contexts, as ‘mordant’ in dyeing contexts, and as ‘make astringent’ in all others. None of our sources however suggest the process it names has anything to do with thickening. The story of how the name for the process came to be associated with thickening is itself an obscure and interesting story. My aim is to show, however, that what stypsis means in the context of perfumery can be understood in the same way as in contexts of dyeing and the manufacture of artificial precious stones and metals. We will use a little kitchen chemistry to explore what those processes are like. My larger aim is to offer a test case of what we can learn about ancient arts by looking at technical vocabulary used in common across them. This vocabulary is worth looking at because it encodes for both technical processes and theoretical presuppositions. In other words, the vocabulary is reliable (but not exhaustive) evidence for how they thought their methods worked. This can in turn contribute to mapping the phylogeny of natural and applied sciences, and ultimately. I am curious what that phylogeny can teach us about the variation and transmission of both techniques and assumptions about how natural materials can be used.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GM21-30494M" target="_blank" >GM21-30494M: Alchemies of Scent. Reconstructing the Practices of Ancient Greco-Egyptian Perfumery: An Experimental Approach to the History of Science</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů