Comb

'Boxwood combs, the death of lice, it's the health of the hair!' [1] This was the cry of street vendors on Parisian streets in 1545. Just like the specialty combs sold today for treating head-lice, combs in early modern France were marketed for their ability to rid one's head of the burdensome parasite, their fine teeth catching the lice and drawing them out from one's locks. This post’s ‘Key Thing’ offers a fine example. Now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, the comb includes one set of fine, narrow teeth that would surely be effective in treating head-lice in addition to another set of slightly wider teeth.

Carved boxwood comb (recto and verso). Sixteenth Century. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, inv. 88-1892. Image credit: Victoria Munn.

In early modern Europe, combs were intimately connected to practices of health and bodily maintenance. As well as being a key instrument for the treatment of head-lice, combs were often used as a salutary tool. While today we understand the practice of hair washing as the complete submersion of the head under water, early modern references are often to the practice of combing the hair to cleanse the body of pathological vapours excreted through the scalp.

Our comb may also have been used for taming knotty tresses, the varying density of its teeth surely designed to accommodate hair of different thickness. Combs made regular appearances in treatments for growing and dyeing the hair, evidenced by the frequent prescription of combs in recipe compendia filled with ways to improve one’s locks. In André Le Fournier's La decoration dhumaine nature et aornement des dames (1530), one of the earliest compendia dedicated to beauty recipes for women, the comb is mentioned several times in its first section devoted to hair treatments. In a recipe promising long hair, for example, the reader, having washed their hair using the prescribed mixture, is instructed to let it dry and then to 'comb your hair with a comb dipped in a little olive oil’.

The very material from which a comb was made could also be an important part of the hair dyeing process. The French physician Nostredamus, who many of us know for his vague prophecies, wrote a book in 1555 dedicated to beauty and body treatments. In one recipe for an oil to dye the hair 'the colour of a crow', Nostredamus specifies the use of a lead or ivory comb to apply it, as well as the continual use of the comb 'when you notice that the beard has changed colour'. Lead combs were effective for the task because lead interacts with the natural sulfur in hair protein to produce lead sulfide and a darker pigment in the hair. Such a technique has roots in antiquity but, as we now know, the use of lead combs can have a detrimental effect on one's health. 

Our comb, however, is made of boxwood, a common material in early modern comb production due to the density of its grain. This density enabled makers to finely cut each individual tooth, the delicacy of which is demonstrated by our example, which includes several broken teeth. Although it is difficult to definitively establish the maker or place of origin of extant combs of the period, many of the boxwood combs circulating in early modern Europe were produced in Oyonnax, in the west of France, thanks to the repository of boxwood in the nearby Jura mountains.

Other materials were used in comb-making, too. In Gilles Corrozet's Les Blasons Domestiques (1539), he describes a toilet case filled with 'combs with large and small teeth which teeth, you must believe, are of ebony or white ivory or of boxwood, to dress beautiful hair, & also to shape long fair beards’ [2]. Many contemporary paintings of women combing their hair, or which include combs lying dormant at a woman's toilet, render the comb in an ivory white, despite the growing popularity of boxwood combs in early modern Europe. In a School of Fontainebleau Portrait of a Lady, thought to depict the mistress of French King Henry II Diane de Poitiers, an ivory comb lies atop the dresser, clearly no longer needed for her exquisitely coiffed hair. It is my contention that this was likely a compositional choice: an ivory comb, rather than one of brown boxwood, offers a tonal comparison to, and helps to emphasise, the women's ivory white skin. In this way, just as amatory poetry of the period compared women's features to beautiful objects, the comb is not only an instrument of beauty, but also a parameter.

Unknown, School of Fontainebleau. Portrait of a  Lady. c.1550. Kunstmuseum Basel, Sammlung Online.

Along with the practical uses outlined, our comb's purpose may also have been symbolic. Combs were intimately connected to notions of beauty and love, regarded as one of Venus' tools of beauty, and were often depicted in scenes of Venus at her toilet. This association was embraced by amatory poets who extolled a particular conception of female beauty in their blasons. In Quand au matin (1552), for example, Pierre de Ronsard is envious of a comb; 'And I'm jealous of the luck of your comb, Which in the morning untangles your beautiful knots’ [3]. Considering these connotations, it is unsurprising that luxury combs were often gifted as a material symbol of love.

As I have explored, the comb was consistently employed in early modern beauty and health practices, and, when it was used in one's daily routine, would have functioned as a constant tactile reminder of one's beloved. Extant examples of luxury combs demonstrate masterful craftsmanship, not just in the delicate sawing of the teeth, but in the openwork and relief carving. This is taken to the extreme in a curious example also in the V&A Collection. Taking on an x-form when opened, the comb has four rows of teeth, each with a slight concave shape, which fold into one another when the comb is closed. Both the impracticality of such a design, and the condition in which the comb is preserved, suggest that it was barely used and perhaps instead played an ornamental role at its owner's toilet. Despite limited real estate, luxury combs also exhibit impressive decorative schemes and embellishment. They often contain amatory iconography or inscriptions, which reflect the alignment of beauty and love expounded by Platonic doctrine. In our example, the central panel of the verso shows an arrow stabbing a heart. The Gothic lettering running along the rectangles within the central panel reads 'prenes en gre ce petit don' (take this little gift for your pleasure).

When I first encountered our original boxwood comb in the V&A collection, I found that the wear it exhibited - the missing panels, the chipped teeth, the broken corner - added to its tactility and charm. It isn't difficult to imagine the comb being drawn through a woman's long locks as she washes her hair, or perhaps as part of her toilet routine, or lying atop her dresser as a reminder of her beloved. Thus, although to the modern viewer a museum display of early modern combs may seem quite quotidian or prosaic, combs such as this can be unpacked not only to reveal many layers of meaning, but to provide material evidence of contemporary ideas about health, beauty and love.

Victoria Munn is a PhD Candidate in the Art History Department at the University of Auckland.

Endnotes (unless stated, all translations into English are the author’s own).

[1] ‘Pignes de bouis, la mort aux poux, c’est la santé de la teste’.
[2] ‘Estuy ou pignes sont dedans/A grosses & menues dentz/Lesquels pignes, debuez vous croire/Sont d’ebené ou de blanc yvoire/Ou de bouys, pour galonner/Les beaulx cheveulx, & testonner/Aussi la longue barbe blonde’, translated in Simon Jervis, ‘“Les Blazons Domestiques” by Gilles Corrozet’, Furniture History 25 (1989), p. 28.
[3] 'Et suis ialoux du bon-heur de ton peigne, Qui au matin des-mesle leurs beaux neuds’.

Selected Bibliography.

Corrozet, Gilles. Les Blasons Domestiques (Paris: La Société des Bibliophiles françois, 1865).
Le Fournier, André. La Decoration Dhumaine Nature et Aornement Des Dames (Paris: Jehan Sainct Denys and Jehan Longis au Palays, 1530).
Jervis, Simon. ‘“Les Blazons Domestiques” by Gilles Corrozet’, Furniture History 25 (1989), pp. 5– 35.
Nostredame, Michel de. Excellent & Moult Utile Opuscule à Touts Necessaire, Qui Desirent Avoir Cognoissance de Plusieurs Exquises Receptes, Divisé En Deux Parties (Lyon: Antoine Volant, 1555).
Ronsard, Pierre de. Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1993).

16 June 2022.