Sugar and Spice
Spices were once as precious as gems: hard to find, extremely pricy, and their trade made cities rich. I come from Italy and have called Venice my home for several years; as I was working on these pieces, I had fresh in mind the idea that the Republic of Venice created its fortune, among other things, on the trade of spices and the custom fees it charged Alexandria and Constantinople, which were, at one point, under its territory. Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant who lived between the 1200s and 1300s, traveled through Asia, and wrote the Book of the Marvels of the World, wrote at length about the riches he encountered in his traveling, often describing the spices in the same sentence as precious metals: “There is great abundance of pepper and also of ginger, besides cinnamon in plenty and other spices, turbit and coconuts.[…] In return, when merchants come here from overseas, they load their ships with brass, which they use as ballast, cloth of gold and silk, sandal, gold, silver, cloves, spikenard and other such spices that are not produced here…. Goods are exported to many parts. Those that go to Aden are carried thence to Alexandria.”
Spices served as currency, and, at times, dishonest business were conducted to make maximum profit by “cutting” them with other ingredients (dirt and stones might be added to pepper, or sawdust to ginger powder). In the middle ages spices were used to demonstrate ones power and riches: the more colorful and aromatic the banquets, the wealthier were the hosts: to the use of saffron, ginger, pepper and cloves, in 1200s were added cinnamon, cumin, anise, and coriander, and later cardamom and nutmeg. The cost of the spices in Europe was directly related to the distance they had to travel to reach their destination: it took one to two years for pepper and ginger to be transported as they came from Malbar (today north Kerela in India), while spices like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg came even from Indonesia, making the travel time three years long.
I find the numerous similarity between spices and gems and precious metals fascinating and I created jewelry inlayed with spices instead of gems. Today responsible jewelry makers, must carefully choose stones with a “clean” record, mined responsibly both for the environment and without taking advantage of local population (in Africa “blood diamonds” and child slavery have been and still are a serious problem). At the highest time of spice trading spices were also at the center of battles for control of routs and in the process people were taken prisoners and tortured. Although it is not exactly the same, what is similar, and seems to be a constant in the history of the world, is the greed, the spilling of blood, and the fact that a few wealthy country routinely take advantage of populations and foreign lands for their personal gain.
Spices served as currency, and, at times, dishonest business were conducted to make maximum profit by “cutting” them with other ingredients (dirt and stones might be added to pepper, or sawdust to ginger powder). In the middle ages spices were used to demonstrate ones power and riches: the more colorful and aromatic the banquets, the wealthier were the hosts: to the use of saffron, ginger, pepper and cloves, in 1200s were added cinnamon, cumin, anise, and coriander, and later cardamom and nutmeg. The cost of the spices in Europe was directly related to the distance they had to travel to reach their destination: it took one to two years for pepper and ginger to be transported as they came from Malbar (today north Kerela in India), while spices like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg came even from Indonesia, making the travel time three years long.
I find the numerous similarity between spices and gems and precious metals fascinating and I created jewelry inlayed with spices instead of gems. Today responsible jewelry makers, must carefully choose stones with a “clean” record, mined responsibly both for the environment and without taking advantage of local population (in Africa “blood diamonds” and child slavery have been and still are a serious problem). At the highest time of spice trading spices were also at the center of battles for control of routs and in the process people were taken prisoners and tortured. Although it is not exactly the same, what is similar, and seems to be a constant in the history of the world, is the greed, the spilling of blood, and the fact that a few wealthy country routinely take advantage of populations and foreign lands for their personal gain.