Booke of receipts, 1670 [manuscript] circa 1670-1791

Booke of receipts, 1670 [manuscript] circa 1670-1791

[England, circa 1670-1791].

1 item ; Folio: 300 x 190 x 14 mm

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Great Britain -- England, -- publication place.

272956 MS

From dealer's description: "English manuscript containing recipes and remedies entitled ‘Booke of Receipts’. [England. Circa 1670-1791]. Folio (300 x 190 x 14 mm). A total 113 text pages on 92 leaves. Text in the earlier hand, mostly to rectos. Binding contemporary limp vellum, using an old deed. Heavily used condition, page edges frayed with loss of text to first 30 or so leaves. Watermark: Horn (see Haewood 2666-2690 – dated circa 1650-1690 – for similar, but not exact match). Provenance: old Sotheby's catalogue description loosely inserted. ¶ There were at least four contributors to the manuscript at one end and its earliest scribe has also “flipped” the volume to create a section devoted to remedies at the opposite end. Hand I (17th century): contributes around 120 recipes and remedies over 39 pages. Hand II (17th – early 18th century), adds another 40 or so recipes and remedies to nine pages. Hand III (mid-18th century): adds a further 60 to 23 pages. Hand IV (late 18th century): 28 recipes to 15 pages. At the opposite end: Hand I (17th century): approximately 75 remedies on 27 pages. ¶ This homemade household book of recipes and remedies has been constructed in perhaps the cheapest way possible: the text block is formed from two stacks of paper stab-stitched and then stitched together as one volume, with a binding fashioned from an old vellum deed. Yet for all its parsimonious construction, it has been made with care, as hinted at by the title to the front cover: “Booke . of . Receipts 1670 ”. The earlier leaves at each end have been damaged as a direct result of the unrobust binding, but such signs of use only add to the appeal of the artefact. NAMES AND PROVENANCE There are no straightforward clues to the identity of our scribes or their household. A pen trial to f.6r, which reads “Will White”, is the only inscription to the text. The vellum document that serves as the binding features numerous names including “Nicholas Dawkins”, “Katherine Cole”, “Thomas Mark Cuthbert” and “Margaret and John Piggott”, and further research may connect some of these to the text. There are several ascriptions in the section 1670-1700 (Hands I and II), including “Sr Tho: Millington” and “The D. of Newcastle” who each supply a “Diet drink”, “Lady Dorrell”, has a medicine “for the drying up of all the humers in the body”, “Dr. Burges”, other remedies are given by “Dr Stevens”, and “Dr Butler of Caimbrid[ge]”, but the conspicuous honorifics lead us to suspect these were attributed recipes circulated in manuscript rather than by individuals known to the scribes. More promising, at least as potential acquaintances, are a “Mrs Joha: Gard” and “John Gard”. Other clues are scattered throughout the recipes, as we shall see. [...]"

Ordered from Dean Cooke, D9747, 2024-05-04, Cat. The Hidden Art of the Book, item #1, Ref. 8236

272956