The Art of Sanatan Suryavanshi. Works dating 2009-2012
Someone I have the honor to call friend and mentor, San is an extremely intelligent and selfless individual that has shaped my path as an artist. I don’t know how many times this guy has sat down with me for hours to explain concepts in depth with me. This is his old work, his new stuff that he refuses to post online is really stunning, take my word for it. Co-Author of the sequel to the book Dreamworlds by Hans Bacher coming soon to Amazon. Be sure to pick up a first edition, I know I will!
While they’re the same species I had a toucan (mixed with some other tropical birds) and a sparrow (also eagle if that makes sense) in mind for the male and female respectively.
i’ve mentioned this here before, but it will remain one of the most ideologically influential experiences of my life: when i was in fifth grade i did a report on post traumatic stress as manifested in veterans of the vietnam war, and my father did me the huge favor of connecting me w/ a vietnam vet friend of his who was diagnosed with PTSD, assuring him that while i was only ten i was bright and curious and he should be as honest with me about his experience as possible.
i remember entering his office with my tape recorder, sitting in a chair that was too big, and asking him questions about war, and his life after war, while swinging my legs over the edge of the chair. i remember being very, very quiet as he spoke of pulling the car over on the highway for fear of crashing when his hands would shake uncontrollably in response to song on the radio or a smell that he couldn’t be sure was real or sense-memory. and of ruined relationships and anger and american hypocrisy.
and i also remember that was the day i learned what “valor” meant. he used “valor” in a sentence and i didn’t know that word, and when i asked him to explain “valor” he became very quiet. and i can’t remember precisely what he said, if he ever offered me the dictionary definition or not, but i do remember him looking very sad, and saying something about our country’s idea of “valor”, and also something about a broken promise. and there was an edge to his words that i couldn’t parse at the time that i would later come to understand was bitterness, that he sounded bitter.
to this day i can’t hear or read the word “valor” without seeing sunlight coming through his office window at a slant, close-to-sunset light, and feeling the kind of quiet, confused, completely internalized panic a child feels when they sense that a grown up is trying very hard not to weep in their presence.
I think we’ve all had enough of the many amrev RPFs that describe guys as smelling like smoke and gunpowder and whatever other boring manly scent. So in an extension of that post about wigs and hair powder, I thought I’d write something brief about pomatum. At the Colonial Williamsburg wigmaker, @azulaludgate, @runawayforthesummer and I sniffed two different types of pomatum: one made from pig’s fat, the other from sheep’s. As has been pointed out, pomatum is heavily scented with things like jasmine, roses, nutmeg, clove oil, lemon, etc.
From what I can recall, the sheep’s fat pomatum contained white wine, apples, and jasmine, among other things, and smelled pretty much like a really nice candle. The pig’s fat one had a warmer, spiced scent to it. I can’t say for certain what the combined smell of unwashed hair, pomatum, and powder would be like, but it’s worth bearing in mind that most people’s hair adjusts pretty quickly if they stop washing it with shampoo.
I know the popular wisdom is that people in the 18th-century reeked and used perfume to cover up their horrible odors, but as was explained in the original wigs post, pomatum served a purpose beyond masking one’s scent, so I wouldn’t go ahead and assume that everyone’s hair smelled terrible. The pomatum is also not an overwhelming scent, it’s relatively subdued. Also! Most of the descriptions of pomatum/pomade that you’ll find online will bring you to posts about women’s hair, but make no mistake: men were using this scented pomatum as well, though I’m not sure if the scents were ever gendered (somehow I doubt it).
tl;dr Writers of amrev RPF, especially writers of romantic stories (*cough*lams*cough*) might want to consider incorporating some of the more pleasant scents of the 18th-century into their writing, and admit to themselves that a lot of these guys just smelled like your grandma’s house.
Everything I’ve read suggested that there were no real gendered fragrances during this time in the 18th century – whether for pomatum or for perfumes in general – and that both women and men used the same floral essences.
Until, you guessed it, the 19th century, when floral became associated with feminine and men started applying their fragrances more subtly and used sharper “rugged” “manly” scents like woodland fragrances.
Yes, this is true. Pomatum AND hair powder (which was also very highly scented) were non-gendered– everyone used the same stuff. I don’t know what recipe they use at Williamsburg, but here is a recipe for one that contains apples:
As for smelling bad… Bathing was somewhat a matter of personal preference and affordability. A full bath required a lot of water to be drawn and heated, so enjoying a daily bath in your own home was a rare luxury that only a few, mostly slave owners, would indulge in. Others came up with ingenious ways to take daily baths, such as the guy who figured out how to rig up a shower by pulling a lever, and the guy who could afford to have water piped into a bathtub. Other people with access to a river or lake enjoyed swimming every day. In Europe, public baths WERE a thing. I am not sure how many of these operated in America. Regardless, people kept clean. To quote Orange is the New Black, they washed “tits, pits, and bits” every day, whether they lived in America or Europe.
In Europe, people used these early bidets to attend to the most relevant personal hygiene:
Did they have deodorant? No. But in reality, people don’t smell that bad if they wash the relevant parts at the end of the day. Fresh sweat doesn’t smell. It’s bacteria that grows in old sweat that stinks, and as long as you keep your sweatiest parts clean, you won’t smell that bad.
Mind you, contemporary Americans are ridiculous. They think that unless you literally reek of chemicals, if you have the slightest trace of natural human scent, that you stink. That’s our problem. We need to get over it.
Also, part of the hygiene standards of the time involved wearing fresh linen or cottonundergarments, which were changed daily.
In a scientific/historical experiment, a man tried it. He stopped bathing for about a month, but wore clothes comparable to those worn in the eighteenth century and earlier, changing into clean linens (linens being the garments that touched the skin, including both undershirt and underpants) every day. As long as he kept to this routine, he did not smell (this was confirmed by other people he interacted with who were adhering to modern hygiene standards at the time).
Further more, they discovered that when he bathed after adhering to the ‘change your linens’ routine for over a month, bathing caused him to reek. Really stink. It is theorized that this is because it threw off his natural ‘skin/scent rythems’.
People have a lot of misconceptions about hygiene prior to the contemporary era. It’s true that daily immersion bathing was less common from the Middle Ages through the Early Modern era, but that doesn’t mean people were filthy and stinky all the time. People washed, and had other ways of cleaning themselves (such as vigorous rubbing with a linen towel). Sponge baths are just as effective as immersion baths. In the Middle Ages, public bath houses were very popular, and not only for the very rich.
There is no doubt that frequent bathing disrupts the skin’s natural microbiome. Because for so long we’ve assumed that bacteria=bad, frequent cleaning with harsh soap=good, we haven’t learned enough about the natural ecology of human skin. How many dermatological problems are the result of destroying the microbiome? How much body odor is the result of the same? There’s some research on this but nothing definitive. Doesn’t stop people from trying to market products though, and this writer for the New York Times did an experiment with one of them.
In short, we overestimate what it takes to stay clean, reasonably fresh-smelling (i.e. like a clean human, not stinky artificial scents), and to keep the skin healthy. In fact, our obsession with cleanliness and smell might be doing some harm to our skin.
The realities – not the “everybody knows” – of period hygiene is fascinating; it’s useful research for a writer and goes into the same file as “knights in armour couldn’t get up when they fell and got onto horses with cranes”; “medieval European swords were blunt iron clubs and too heavy for modern people to lift” and so on…
Inspiration Haven 