Fuming dish
Fuming dish (Fuming dish), 1566-1665This clay fuming pot is of green and yellow lead glazed Surrey/Hampshire border ware. Fuming pots were used to heat herbs and spices to fragrance and fumigate people's houses. Hot embers would be put inside the pedestal base, which would heat the herbs in the chamber above. The herb chamber has holes in to let the smell of the herbs out. Fuming pots were not only to create pleasant scent. In early modern Europe it was commonly believed that disease spread through miasma (putrid air) so bad smells were a threat to health. Fumigation was therefore a popular method of preventing the spread of the plague. Responsibility for everyday medical practice including both prevention and treatment fell to the mistress of the house, so was a key part of middling women’s work. The medical recipe book, A Rich Storehouse OR Treasurie for the Diseased (London, 1612) gives this advice for scenting the home:
“A preservative by correcting the ayre in all houses:
Take Rosemary dryed, Juniper, Bay-leaves, or Frankincense, and cast the same upon the coles in a chafingdish, and receive the fume or smoke thereof into your head. If you will, put a little Lavender or Sage that is dryed, into the fire with the rest it will do much good. Also to make your fires in eathen pannes (rather to remove about your Chambers, then in Chimneys) shall be better to correct the aires in your houses, then otherwise.”
For middling women, diligence in scenting the home was part of essential domestic tasks and a vital complement to the medical marketplace of apothecaries and physicians.
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| Object Type | Fuming dish |
| Year | 1566-1665 |
| Material | Ceramic |
| Owned By | Museum of London A4545 |
| Keywords | producing; consuming; home; health; housework; occupation; ceramics; botanical; provisioning |
| Image Credit | Fuming dish, Museum of London A4545. Reproduced with permission of and © Museum of London. |