I don't know about Devon's piece, but here are some of the historical
references to yellow starch and other colored starches that both dyed and
stiffened lace ruffs:
"Domestic Life in England", 1835, page :
"But the fashion lay in the starch as well as the ruff: of the former there
were five colours, the most fashionable of which was yellow starch,
invented by Mrs. Turner, who was concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas
Overbury, for which she was hanged at Tyburn; she would die in a yellow
ruff, of her own invention; which made yellow starch so odious, that it
immediately went out of fashion."
Good old Stubbs, in his 1595 "Anatomie of Abuses", listed out various
colors of starch:
"The one arch or pillar wherewith the devil's kingdome of great ruffes in
underpropped, is a certain kinde of liquid matter, which they call startch,
wherein the devill hath learned them to wash and die their ruffes, which,
being drie, will stand stiff and inflexible about their neckes. And this
startch they make of divers substances, sometimes of wheate flower, of
branne, and other graines: Sometimes of rootes, and sometimes of other
thinges: Of all collours and hues, as white, redde, blewe, purple, and the
like."
In the letters of James Howell, 1705 ("Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, familiar letters
domestic and forren"), he writes
http://books.google.com/books?id=qzkIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA3&dq=%22yellow+starch%22
"...amongst others Mistris Turner, the first inventress of yellow Starch,
was executed in a Cobweb Lawn Ruff of that colour at Tyburn, and with her I
believe that yellow Starch, which so much disfigured our Nation, and
rendered them so ridiculous and fantastic, will receive its Funeral."
Lynn Carpenter in SW Michigan, USA
http://lost-arts.blogspot.com/
Ravelry ID: alwen
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