Past and Present: Art

Where Does The Tradition Of Wedding Cakes Come From?

The wedding cake goes back to the Roman Empire where cakes were actually barley bread. The groom would partially eat the loaf and then break the rest over the bride’s head. This symbolized his dominion over her, and the crumbs that fell to the floor symbolized good luck and fertility. It was good luck as well for the guests to eat the crumbs, and single women went after crumbs to ensure their own future marriages. The breaking of the bread over the bride’s head was phased out over time. 

During the middle ages, cakes were simply flour-based breads or biscuits. It was the guests’ duty to each bring a small cake to the ceremony. The cakes were piled up on top of each other between the bride and groom. Should the bride and groom succeed in kissing over the pile, they would have good luck in their marriage. The small, bland cakes evolved into dense fruitcakes baked well in advance of the wedding and soaked in spirits for preservation.

Flowing out of this tradition came the bride’s pie, making its appearance in the 17th century. The pie was made of anything from mincemeat to mutton to sweetbreads. For poorer families, this pie made up a centrepiece of the wedding meal. A main ingredient of any pie was a glass ring. The woman who found the ring would be the next to be married – a tradition replaced by the throwing of the bouquet today.

By the late 19th century, sugar was more widely available and the wedding cakes of today began to take shape. The first known wedding confection cake appeared in 1859 and commemorated the marriage of one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. However, even with this cake, only the bottom layer was actual cake. The top tiered layers were made of spun sugar. Despite the fake upper layers, the Victorian era gave rise to the elaborately decorated cakes that we know today, with the flourishes of color, sugar and figures we’re used to seeing. It is even said that Queen Victoria herself had a cake weighing over 300 pounds!

Queen Victoria is also credited with popularizing white in a wedding to symbolize purity. White icing on wedding cakes became traditional during this time. Even before this specific symbolism, cakes were white simply because ingredients for the cakes were hard to come by, especially the sugar used in the icing. The whiter the sugar, the more refined, and therefore the more affluent the family appeared. So, the white wedding cake was originally a symbol of affluence rather than purity.

As the tiered cake evolved, so did the symbolism behind it. Starting in the 17th century, it was thought that sleeping with a piece of cake under one’s pillow would help them dream of their future spouses. This idea led to the tradition of brides passing crumbs of their cake through their rings and distributing them to guests who could place the crumb under their pillow. This tradition tapered off after the superstition of never removing one’s wedding ring after the ceremony appeared.

At this time, the three tiered cake became traditional. The first layer is for the reception, the second layer for distributing to guests, and the third is saved for the anniversary, leading us to another popular tradition: freezing the top tier of the cake and sharing it on the couple’s first wedding anniversary. Another take on this tradition is that the tier is unfrozen and eaten at the christening of the first child. It was assumed that this event would happen soon after the wedding, so the event would share the cake from the wedding. However, as couples waited longer after marriage to have children, the notion of saving the top tier for the christening tapered off.

The wedding cake has a rich history, but luckily in this day and age, you can have whatever size, style and flavor of cake your wedded heart desires.

Recipe: Curried Rice and Peach Salad

The barelegged look

Here are some interesting tit-bits from yesteryear!

Victorian woman considered even the merest glimpse of female leg indecent –much more so if the leg was unclad. Right up to present times, no fashion –conscious woman would go stockingless – despite a virtual ban on them by the British government during the Second World War because of material shortages. Even when supplies of wartime cotton and rayon stockings ran out, many women used specially prepared leg make-up.

The first real attempt to abandon stockings was made during the First World War by actress Gaby Deslys, mistress of King Manual of Portugal. She shocked women and amused men by declaring that she would not wear stockings again until Germany surrendered to the Allies. In the 1920’s Hollywood femme fatale, Pola Negri went barelegged, and actress Joan Crawford discarded stockings for eveningwear in 1926.

In 1934, after a long debate, the fashion weekly Sketch concluded that ‘going barelegged is inartistic and tends to spoil the softness of the skin.’ The British government ‘s official disapproval of stockings came in 1942, when the Board of Trade warned that if women did not stop wearing them in summer, there would be none by winter.

As late as the 1920’s, matrons in Melbourne, Australia disapproved when model Jean Shrimpton appeared as guest of honour at Flemington racecourse hatless, gloveless- and stockingless. Then in 1983, the Princes of Wales attended a Government House party in Canberra with her elegant legs covered only by a golden suntan; the barelegged look had finally won the royal seal for approval. Nobody could argue with that.

Here is a tongue-in-the-cheek joke just for you:

A young bride tells her friend, “Paul keeps telling everyone he’s going to marry the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“What a shame! And after all the time you’ve been engaged!”

Woman to woman

My South Africa

My freelancer

Why do we kiss?

Just think of being in front of a warm cracking with you partner in your hands, with a kiss and a cuddle. But have you ever thought about why people kiss? It could be a greeting or a sign of affection, but we all kiss.

Origin of the kiss

The strangest theory on the history of the kiss that I have heard finds its roots in the age of the cave man. It is thought that in primitive time that a mother pre-chewed the food for her baby and transferred it 'in a kiss'. Although this could never be proved, it would explain why the kiss is a sign of affection, between mother and child and latter, adults.

Another theory that I found was that the kiss was reflected in the Ziller Valley of Central Europe, where the exchange of pre-chewed tobacco between a male and a female was common. The young man would let a tip of the piece of tobacco, or spruce resin, etc rest between his closed teeth and invite the girl to grasp it with her teeth -- which of course obliged her to press her mouth firmly on that of the young man -- and pull it out. If a girl accepted the wad of pre-chewed tobacco, it meant she returned the boy's love.

The third theory that I found was from a religious or sacred origin. There have been examples from around the world as early as 2000 BC, that show that people could have brought their faces together to symbolise spiritual union. Even in the culture of Indians, it was believed that the exhaled breath was part of the soul, and by two people bringing their mouths together, showed the joining of their souls. (Another variation on this believed that kissing evolved from the smelling of a companion's face as an act of greeting.)

Kiss through history

Even without fully knowing where the kiss came from, it is well known that the kiss has been with us for a long time.

In the sixth century in France, dancing was one way to display affection, but every dance was ended in a kiss.

Apparently, Russia was the first to incorporate the kiss into the marriage ceremony, where a promise was sealed with a kiss.

The Romans kissed to greet each other. On Roman emperor showed a persons importance, by what part of his body they were allowed to kiss, from the cheek to the foot.

In 16th century England, the clove-studded apple originated. An apple was prepared by piercing it with as many cloves as the fruit could hold and then a maid then carried the apple through the fair till she spied a lad she thought worth kissing. She would offer him the apple, and once he'd selected and chewed one of the cloves, they would share a kiss. After that, the apple passed into the man's possession, and he would venture off in search of another lass to continue the game with.

At one stage it was even thought that people found kissing pleasurable because when the two lips met during kissing, an electric current was generated.

A kiss is a kiss

Now days, kisses range from small pecks on the cheeks as a greeting, to an the use of the lips and tongue as a sign of passion. It is that action that when two people embrace, causes hormones are released into the blood stream, inducing a sense of euphoria that you feed in the sweetness of your lovers mouth.

It's a kiss that brings every fibre of your being alive, turns your stomach over, sends Goosebumps up your spine. It's a kiss that forgives your misdemeanours and smiles at your mistakes. Ingrid Bergman puts it together in that "a kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous".

By Infoweb

My Beautiful World

Woman to Woman

FASHION AND BEAUTY

More than 40 000 years ago the inhabitants of Western Europe adorned themselves with jewellery of ivory and bone. Clothes, worn to protect their bodies from the elements or to provide covering for modesty’s sake, came much later. The people of northern Europe probably first slung animal skins around themselves as protection from the cold in about 25000 BC. In the Mediterranean and Middle East, fibres from plants such as flax, and the hair of goats and sheep, were woven to form lightweight fabrics that mot only afforded protection against the Sun’s rays but also signified social status. The earliest of these textiles, made in Anatolia in Turkey, date to about 6500 BC.

As civilisations developed, so styles of dress also evolved In Egypt, Greece and Rome, clothes were draped, while the people of northern Europe and the East wore stitched, tubular garments. In the classical world the toga, worn not only by rulers but also by philosophers and teachers, was regarded as a symbol of civilisation.

Breeches and tunics, by contrast, were considered typical of barbarian, tribal societies. But the idea of fashion, with its ever-changing cycles of styles and trends, first took hold in the mid 1300 in Paris, London and the Italian city-states, when the elite rejected their flowing garments for tight-fitting clothes decorated to show the latest tastes. Men’s robes, which had previously been ankle- length, now reached above the knee, while female dress was transformed by lacing, buttons, and the introduction of the décolletage. As people desired to change their silhouettes at regular intervals - a trend that coincided with a growing international textile trade – so cutting and tailoring developed.

Early fashion belonged to the elite, who tried to preserve their social superiority with ‘sumptuary laws’ forbidding tradesmen and yeomen from wearing expensive and lavishly embroidered fabrics.

But the French code off dressing, based on a fixed social hierarchy and courtly etiquette, was overturned by the Revolution of 1789. Elaborate wigs and powdered hair were abandoned, men’s clothes were no longer embellished with embroidery and lace, and women adopted the simple Empire gown. Style became a mark of individual freedom, adopted for its own sake, No longer the preserve of the aristocracy; it soon became associated with the avant-garde, Romantic writers and artists, political activists and dandies.

In Britain affordable, mass-produced printed textiles and fashion accessories were made available by the Industrial Revolution. These were popular with the middle classes, who saw them as a means of expressing their new confidence and success. For men power now lay in business, not the court. The dark suit became a male ‘uniform’, while women paraded the family’s status through their own and their children’s dress.

Fashion and femininity were inextricably entwined. Women were weighed down by petticoats and their mobility restricted by delicate shoes.

In the late 1800s attempts began to make female dress more ‘sensible’. But ideals of beauty and fashion held sway, with department stores offering ready-made copies of the newest styles featured in magazines, society photographs and, from the early 1900’s, the cinema. From these beginnings the consumer-orientated 20^th century fashion and beauty industries were launched.  

 Woman-to-Woman