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Antique 18th c Kangxi Imari Barber Surgeon Basin Ca 1710 China Porcelain Chinese

About the Item

Important Nobility Barber Surgeon Basin for Bleeding & shaving much more Chinese export porcelain, Imari, Kangxi period (ca 1710), with a very rich flower decoration. A barber in the 16th -19th century is not what we now call a barber but much more. From Haircuts to Bloodletting From the Middle Ages onwards, one would visit the barber not only for a haircut or beard trim. If you needed a tooth pulled or a bloodletting performed, you could also go to him. He also worked as a surgeon. During a bloodletting, the barber-surgeon would make an incision in the skin using a tool called a lancet and collect the blood in the basin. It was believed that this would balance the body's humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile). An imbalance of these humors was thought to cause diseases if one of them was too abundant. The Barber Surgeon Imagine your monthly beauty routine. Perhaps you go to the salon and get a manicure and pedicure, or to the hairstylist for a cut and dye. Every six months you go to a dentist to have your teeth cleaned and examined, and to the doctor once a year for your physical exam. Three hundred years ago, your routine would have been much the same, except for one thing. It would all have been done at the barbershop. Barbers in the modern period are known to do mainly one thing: cut hair. For much of the last hundred and fifty years, their red and white striped barber poles signified their ability to produce a good clean shave and a quick trim. This was not always the case, however. Up until the 19th century barbers were generally referred to as barber-surgeons, and they were called upon to perform a wide variety of tasks. They treated and extracted teeth, branded slaves, created ritual tattoos or scars, cut out gallstones and hangnails, set fractures, gave enemas, and lanced abscesses. Whereas physicians of their age examined urine or studied the stars to determine a patient’s diagnosis, barber-surgeons experienced their patients up close and personal. Many patients would go to their local barber for semiannual bloodletting, much like you take your car in for a periodic oil change. Barbers through the Ages Beginning in the Egyptian era, throughout Roman times and in the Middle Ages, barbers were known to perform much more than simple haircuts and efforts of vanity. They were called on to perform minor surgical operations, pull teeth, and embalm the dead. Their many duties made them the surgeons of the day. The barbering occupation began in ancient Egypt, where both men and women shaved their heads and wore wigs, and higher-ranking officials often shaved their entire bodies. Egypt’s wealthy citizens and royalty were often tended to by personal slaves, who dressed their wigs, cleaned, and shaved their bodies. Gradually a working class of independent barbers developed, who would perform these duties for all members of society. Personal barbers would also perform additional duties, such as cleaning ears and examining teeth. The Greeks, in their heyday, wore long hair and curled beards, which required much tending. Alexander the Great, fearing that enemies would use long hair as handles in battle, encouraged his men to cut their hair and shave their beards, which required a skilled set of haircutters. These expert Greek barbers spread along with the widening influence of the Greek state, eventually entering Roman territory, where they set up stalls in the city streets. Many settled communities around the world also employed a set of skilled barber-surgeons. Cortez encountered barbers upon entering Tenochtitlan; European colonists relied on the surgical abilities of the newfound Indian populations in American colonies; and Chinese traveling barbers wandered through the streets, ringing a bell to announce their presence. Because barbers employed an array of sharp metal tools, and they were more affordable than the local physician, they were often called upon to perform a wide range of surgical tasks. Barbers differed greatly from the medicine man or shaman, who used magic or religion to heal their patients. Surgery was considered a “lesser art,” and was not to be performed by the magical preist-physicians that ruled the mystical connection between the soul and the body. But this did not diminish their presence or usefulness. In the ancient Mayan civilization, they were called upon to create ritual tattoos and scars. The ancient Chinese used them to castrate eunuchs. They gelded animals and assisted midwives, and performed circumcisions. Their accessibility and skill with precise instruments often made them the obvious choice for surgical procedures. Barbers, who had once performed an entire plethora of surgical procedures, were now primarily responsible for the care of a patron’s hair and nails. Increasingly in the 17th and 18th centuries, barbers became wigmakers for the European elite, some of them eventually splitting off into their own specialty as hairdressers. Even so, the barber-surgeons skills remained in high demand as late as 1727, when John Gay penned his poem, The Goat Without a Beard: His pole, with pewter basins hung, Black, rotten teeth in order strung, Rang’d cups that in the window stood, Lin’d with red rags, to look like blood, Did well his threefold trade explain, Who shav’d, drew teeth, and breath’d a vein. It is hard to imagine going to the barber shop today to get a boil lanced or a tooth pulled, or for an occasional bloodletting, but for much of human history this was the case. As medicine, and surgery, advanced, so did the profession of barbery. From haircuts to hangnails, they did it all. The barber shop was the common ancestor of many different occupations today; surgeons, dentists, tattooists, embalmers, doctors, hairdressers, wigmakers, manicurists, pedicurists, and more can all source their ancestry to that one common denominator: the barbersurgeon. Condition Some minimal rimfritting only. And holes for hanging in the base rim. Size: 26.7x6.3CM Diameterxheight Period 18th century Qing (1661 - 1912)

Dimensions:

Height: 2.49 in (6.3 cm)Diameter: 10.52 in (26.7 cm)

Style:

Qing (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Porcelain

Place of Origin:

China

Period:

17th Century

Date of Manufacture:

1690

Condition:

Minor losses.

Seller Location:

Amsterdam, NL

Materials

Porcelain

This is a very good early Chinese Teapot and matching cover from the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi period ( 1662 to 1722) which we date to Circa 1710. The teapot has a globular form on a sho...

Category

Antique Early 18th Century Chinese Chinese Export Ceramics

Materials

Porcelain

Chinese Export Kangxi Period Teapot Hand Painted Imari Pattern, Circa 1710

$1,029

Antique 18th c Kangxi Imari Barber Surgeon Basin Ca 1710 China Porcelain Chinese

About the Item

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