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Antique 18th c Kangxi Imari Barber Surgeon Basin Ca 1710 China Porcelain Chinese
$2,140.70
£1,621.63
€1,838
CA$2,965.66
A$3,326.18
CHF 1,741.87
MX$40,416.34
NOK 22,118.82
SEK 20,970.20
DKK 13,994.10
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:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1690
- Condition:Minor losses.
- Seller Location:Amsterdam, NL
- Reference Number:Seller: 1320000896561stDibs: LU4863245085432
About the Seller
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- ShippingRetrieving quote...Shipping from: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Return Policy
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