The plants alongside around the same number of paintings of birds and animals amount to one of the most extensive collections of flora and fauna produced by a company official on the subcontinent in the 18th century. This type of drawing points to the systematic depiction of plants in the European conventions of linear taxonomy on plain sheets of paper, the sheer number of works and the moments of startling artistry in many of the depictions. But they can also with other paintings and other art forms, including poetry gardens and recipes to expand the approach to the depiction of plants and birds, in which works made for company officials are one part. For instance, Martens inscribed painting of a flaming Lily can be related to one included in an album of 17th and 18th century Indian paintings that Francis juice collected in the early 19th century, or the paintings of flowers placed adjacent to gardens in another one of his albums. Here the singular flower is attended to alongside its position within the garden, its laborers and users as well as its metaphors. It opens up the question of ephemeral arts and their documentation and other ones. And specifically within that, the connections between food and art, which I'll discuss today via flowering plants, fruits and vegetables and other produce like legumes. Martens flaming Lily looks different when considered as one among the 600 in the series, and different still when connected to other arts in the region. So together, they offer an opportunity to think through a range of approaches to the depiction of cultivation and sale from a single painting to the series as a data set to farms and gardens gardeners and grain sellers markets and albums. And consider how ephemeral arts passed down to us through representation. Born in Leon in 1735 Club Martens traveled to India in 1751 at the age of 16, as in the army of the French East India Company. And whereas the British gained power, he switched the company's forces in 1760. And in 1775 he became superintendent of the Nawab or Mughal governor of our arsenal in Lucknow. And in 1779 he became an employee of the Nawab himself and remained in the region until his death in 1800. As Rosie Louland Jones has spiritedly documented Martens was an extraordinary man with a keen sense for business alongside a range of eclectic interests from hot air balloon flights to rerouting a river to cool a house of his own design. In 1786 he took over the estate of Najafgar, which can be viewed in this watercolor by see to round made a few decades later, and became a local landowner. While he continued to grow and sell crops for the local market. He also introduced potentially lucrative high value raw materials like indigo for dyes and roses for fragrant waters and perfumes. He experimented with potentially valuable produce like the potato and tobacco. He further hired Indian artists whose names remain unknown to us to primarily depict plants and birds, which amount to around again 600, including this one of coriander. The artists were taught to focus on parts of the plants important to linear taxonomy, and most of the plants bear linear names to the extent possible within that system. Some are also inscribed with the names of the plants and version and words. The scholars have focused on the qualities and products of Martin that were exceptional. Here I'd like to turn to Martin 600 paintings as a data set and acknowledge the work of Henry Nolte in cataloging this collection IQ gardens and his generosity and sharing the materials with me. With this data set of paintings as a whole, it becomes clear that while Martin did experiment with certain lucrative items. He also maintained the crops already in rotation that supplied a local market as well as his own pantry. We see coriander and radishes, as well as different types of spinach, cucumber, okra eggplant, French beans, amaranth, caperberries, mustard, chilies, watercress, gourds, grains like barley, flocks and millet, and legumes including chickpeas, tour, masoor and urad dal, or lentils, and fruits including plums, pomegranates, melons, guavas, jackfruit, mulberries, tamarind and pears, spices and herbs like coriander, verbena, fennel, ginger and cumin. In his writings, Martin discusses the fruits that the estate sold locally in Comfort are slightly further away in Lucknow, which included pomegranates, sweet limes, mulberries and custard apples from the orchards. They also sold different types of lentils or dal and maize. The fruits were also cultivated for fodder. One quote instructs the help to feed a pomegranate a day to the cranes and the peacocks. And this type of attention to what types of produce animals eat in order to perfume their flesh is also told repeatedly by contemporary cooks and eaters from this region such as gaming for Siberian cranes who feasted on saffron in their migrations or feeding saffron pills directly to animals to again infuse their flesh. These quotes map onto the drawings, but the drawings also provide far more variety in terms of the produce, as well as insight into the range of products cultivated by the estate than the writings by Martin himself. So alongside fruits, vegetables, grain and legumes there were also sweet smelling flowers, jasmine, poppies, larkspur, trees and shrubs and numerous medical plants. They also show the limits of Linnaean taxonomy. While some plants bear the classifications like the coriander on the left. Others like the radish on the right bear a name so generic that it's hard to discern the specific vegetable. Written in Persian and Urdu on the other hand are are much more specific, such as Metis for Fenugreek through the naming conventions it becomes clear that different knowledge systems are being woven together and supplementing information that is not yet been provided by the Linnaean system. These drawings were clearly produced to be part of a European classification of natural history, and they map on to the documentation of other colonial officials in terms of their interest in the values of imported and exported goods, especially for, again, export and for revenue collection so absolutely part of the colonial system. And I just want to briefly mention another company official named James Forbes, who from 1760 to 1784 worked in Western India, and in 1778, he was appointed to be a revenue collector in Gujarat, which included some 200 villages. And like Martin while he detailed the most high value items in his letters and illustration like cottons or the chili that you're seeing on the screen. Red dyes tobacco sugar cane. He also focused on the crops that sustained people. Grains like rice or sorghum millet beans, doll and oils for cooking and lights. However, such series of plants as lucrative colonial goods, or those gleaned for sustenance and revenue. We juxtaposed with other depictions of plants, laborers and poetry to begin to gesture to a wider system so moving from the ingredients that are documenting what was growing at the time and where those items were moving to how they were part of an aesthetic system a part of a series of metaphors. For instance, Delphinium. Sorry, this, sorry, these are actually two more from Forbes's albums that China, or the chickpea and Dori the sorghum. Delphinium, known as nepharmon or larkspur is a loan on its sheet of pale paper in Martin's collection, but gains its flower companion the poppy in the border of what is now known as the small Clive album at the V&A. Nicholas Roth has discussed how larkspurs and corn poppies, which also feature in Martin's collection of drawings are both annual flowers that were commonly grown together in mixture alternating rows, in part because they share similar cultivation needs, but also because they look so attractive together so they begin to move from, you know, a system of cultivation to one that is aesthetic. And on the right was part of an album that contain paintings that are not only unified by the flower friend borders of poppies and larkspurs, but also seem to put the single botanical specimen back within the context of the garden. The album contains alternating pages of specimens, or what we might call flower portraits with scenes of gardens. On the right we see a man watering the garden, while another man hose it, and a beautiful woman collects its flowery offerings. To give you a broader sense of the album's juxtapositions, we see two paintings of women and children who have collected flowers many flip flourishing trees, followed by a pair of plants on the right. The, and on the right the depiction of the only edible plant in the album, the branch of a cherry tree. These are two scenes of more masculine activities, a scene of a hunt in the wilderness, and a portrait of a man holding a flower in a garden. These situate the paintings of flowers and fruits within the spaces of cultivation and social activity related to gardens. They also gesture to the labor of cultivation, as we saw in the first painting where the lady and man hoeing seem to have been added by a later artist to join the man drawing water as of acknowledging that more people were required in the garden from those managing it to those experiencing its beauty. The juxtaposition of these works also points to the movement of produce from the garden or farm, which other types of manuscripts depict more explicitly. In the Tashri Akvam, which translates as the history of the origin and distinguishing marks of the different cast of India, which was commissioned by the company Colonel James Skinner in 1825 from Delhi artists, and is now in the British Library. We see paintings of occupations from the garden to the market or from picked grain and legumes to their roasting and processing, as is seen from fruits distilled into flower waters, oils and perhaps alcoholic beverages. Another author in this period, Ghulam Yahya, created a compendium of 11 trades for the company official Robert Glenn and Bareilly, again also in North India, circa 1820. His attention to certain types of labor is also part of the colonial acquisition of information, as are many of the other albums I've discussed, and marks an intersection of cultivation and markets with representation. He includes grand parters, grocers and kebab roasters and detailed priceless as Mehraf Shah Farouk has discussed. The grocer, for instance, specialized and imported items from the southern duck and plateau of India, from the east, the west and the mountains, and these included nutmeg and cloves, cotton almonds, ginger, almonds of Kabul, almonds of Dostpur, almonds, currants and Persian plums, which we see in the schematic table of ingredients and prices, the representation of the grocer with his colorful wares, scales and pots, and then the graphic rendition solely of the containers. However, a small number of items were grown locally in Bareilly in North India. It is fascinating that in Martin's series of botanical illustrations, none of the foreign items appear, but the artist did visualize most of the local goods, as noted in Ghulam Yahya's list, for instance. So we meet our coriander again, on div, cumin, tobacco and rose petals in the list and in the illustration. So we start to see that these are really documenting a much more local industry. The manuscript also acknowledges the movement from fields to markets to cook delicacies in the kebab maker. The author distinguishes between recipes made by trained cooks of wealthy people that include cream, ground poppy seeds, ginger juice and saffron, for example, which are still very familiar as marinating ingredients today. These ingredients that we know from the grocer were obtained from abroad, versus those available in the market made simply when, and I quote, a cow or goat meat is chopped and red chilies and salt are added. The paste is then stuck on iron skewers and roasted, then sold. And this product could make 150 kebabs, for example. The movement from the fields to markets to foodstuffs is also seen in other illustrative manuscripts from North India, such as the Eid Ki Tathniat or greetings on the Festival of Eid, written by Mir Hassan in 1786 for Nawab Asafo Dalla, but this is a manuscript copy from a few years later. It describes the flourishing city of Faizabad during this festival period, and most resplendently includes market scenes here in the whitewashed arched colonies and on the street. We see vendors selling different types of melons, other selling sherbet and foodstuffs and hookahs for smoking. Melons, tobacco, rosewater, these items were equally portrayed in Marten's collection of botanical paintings and in Ghulam Yahya's descriptions, as well as in the materials on the other side of produce in recipes like the kebabs, and those described in recipe books. This is a 19th century. In the recipe book, for example, it's lithographed, the Khwan Niamut, the cuisine of riches or the abundant table, which offers recipes for such commestibles seen in the Eid Ki Tathniat manuscript we just saw. Almond sweets like loz badam, scented with roses and saffron, as well as the types of vessels in different materials, such as unfired clay to impart the cool earth, and to soak up excess liquid or copper to retain either heat or cold for serving the recipes discussed inside. Other types of items gained specificity through oral history. Suleyman Khan, the Raja of Mahmudabad, once described to me the first liquid to pass a newborn's lips called Guhti. He said that the ingredients depend on the mother and the father's humors and the family's characteristics. And that someone in his family, for example, was never swiss seed coriander. So the proper herbs were pounded, boiled, liquefied, strained and given to the child by the Hakim, who is a doctor of Islamic medicine. And I'm showing you one image on the right of Hakim. And this was the first thing given, he described, even before a mother's milk in order to purge the child. And this he describes as the very beginning of cuisine. The single plant, the single plant splayed on the page in a natural history illustration, gains a context outside of the series and the system of classification. Yet it also remains a crucial part of how we might begin to consider these relationships between food and art. So food as an ingredient and art has a representation of it as well as its sensory experience. Poems also describe cities that were flourishing in terms of a progression of raw foodstuffs. And if anyone ever comes to that Isle of Singhala writes Malik Muhammad, Jayasi and the Hindavi romance Padmavat circa 1540 as translated by Aditya Bell. It is as if he enters paradise on every side are planted thick mango grows rising from the earth to meet the sky. Jayasi moves from the mango groves to the fruit dense and pleasant to the birds that sit in the mango orchard to the wells and step wells lakes and pools. To the, again, I'm continuing to quote the ambrosial gardens planted with peerless fruit watched over carefully limes fresh and color and orange citrons and almond trees willows and figs grow there. In fruit are huge citrons grapefruits and lemons and oranges red and full of juice grapes ripen and apples fresh and leaf pomegranates and vines please the eyes. The Indian gooseberries are delightful and the banana clusters hanging low mulberries Avaroa and red currents bear fruit, as do the Corinda to do be enthroned G nut. One can see both soil and date and other edible fruits both sweet and sour, the wells yield water like sherbet, as if mixed with sugar in the channels. It flows through the clay pots of water wheels and soaks the ambrosial vines and quote. This description is paradisiacal like a romantic idealization or a moogle Arcadia and the phrasing of Sunil Sharma. But it is interesting to read it for the movement from mango groves to cultivated gardens to flower gardens to the city and the markets, where all of these items are sold and processed into delicacies and other goods. So why bring all of this together. While this talk has been just a sketch. I wanted to open a conversation on flowers and food stuffs that are ephemeral that we can access only through these kind of ingredient lists or these representations. So consider how we might access them holistically from their depiction from botanical paintings produced for company officials to albums poems narrative narratives and the cultivators and cooks who tended and transformed them. To some extent many of these people and plants are absent right plants will and die after a few days or if dried months dishes go bad, fragrant distillations evaporate. Many of the artists names I've discussed are now unknown to us, not to mention the laborers depicted as types rather than as individuals. The ephemerality of this material is both within the material itself and in those that tended to it. Is it an appropriate methodology then to build a framework around what is absent through materials that do remain. The artistic production of course also has its own goals, which intersect with food and cultivation, but also of course aestheticize it. There is a high low aspect at play here in the histories of these arts. The paintings of plants are often deemed illustrations sit sitting somewhere in between science and art and scholarship. There are a number of colonial systems of knowledge acquisition, whereas the late Mughal paintings are within fine manuscripts or albums. And then of course, we see the same distinctions within histories of food themselves, and we saw that even in the description of the kebabs right those that are made for the masses and those that are made for the elites. So in today's talk on the progression from cultivation to design and society on this double page folio in an album now in the so museum. At the center of the page on the left is the botanical drawing of a mango surrounded by floral designs set within mango shapes and tones all within a mango yellow border and of course perhaps this is Indian yellow derived from the urine of the cow who eats mango leaves again we return to the source itself. The adjacent folio depicts the youthful Mughal Mughal Emperor Jahungir holding a mango. And the creator of this album clearly was thinking about how a beloved food stuff like a mango moves from the fruit itself to pigment design and contemplation, both connected to and removed from its life on the tree. So with that I will end and pass it over to Susan. Thank you very much. Holly and I started talking very early on about food as a project, many, many years ago, and we can't remember where it was, but these are sort of works in progress if you will now finally coming it seems to closer to a fruition if I may use that that term. Thank you for this invitation. Shria, thank you for for your hosting us and to Emma for making it happen, the practicalities of things. So, this too is a project of mine that I've been working on bits and pieces over a long period of time. And this year on sabbatical I'm hoping to produce physical, a physical something other than than the food that I keep making and eating. But before I start, I'd like to, to ask for your indulgence as I'd like to make a note of the incredible events that happen in Iran on the streets of Iran and are have been spearheaded by brave young women, or women of all ages in Iran, who have gotten the title of heroes of the year from the Times magazine, all of which we forget in the midst of celebrations of Christmas and New Year and this, or wars elsewhere. But that we need to, I feel very strongly, as an Iranian who lived through the first revolution, of which this sort of activity women facing outwards with their arms raised, men facing towards the Ayatollah with their arms raised is a process, a historical process that requires us thinking and I'm a historian and I look at these things in terms of the historical location of the movement that becomes that of perhaps emancipation, not just of women, but of the people of a place such as Iran and in the middle of 19th century in fact the origins of this active sort of avant garde breaking away from the rules of, of dress for women emerge out of Iran in fact, with the famous to her the pure one, known in the solace of the eye a poet of enormous significance and what she did which was to enter the room at a conference of men without her face cover which was the norm cause such opera that allegedly one of those men cut his own throat and others ran out of the room. In part, this is to say that what is happening in Iran is not a Western originated feminist activity but one that has historical roots and in many of these places. In fact, they happen quite exactly at the same time as they do in the West, in fact, on that note and I appreciate your kindness in indulging me to bring something that is on the minds of many of us who are deeply affected by what is happening in, and Iran is not just an isolated place but a representation of a larger territory, if you will. Okay, now I switch to aestheticizing the experience of food, following what what Holly said I'd like to pick up on, and we can talk about it when we sit down to talk about our respective papers about that kind of a family reality of experience of eating food or being in front of food and encountering food, if you will. So, my projects is not about the shared practice, especially of the early modern period, I go a century or so before Holly's project to cover 16th and 17th centuries and this early modern sort of the aestheticizing of food come and sell practices, the emergence of images, picturing food, especially in oil painting in European arts where the the sensuality of food itself comes to life with the use of oil, and also a moment when cookery, treatises emerge in large numbers, objects are specifically made for food practices and so forth. I put it in that context to just say that I'm perfectly alert to the sort of the neighborhoods, if you will, the larger Eurasian context of this early modern period. I want to focus on the case in Iran, and this is the period of Safavid, the coin coincides with the Safavid period, there are particularities that emerge out of this for instance sheification of Iran, distinction of an imperial claim that is characterized by she Islamic approach, which has its own qualities beyond the time I have here, but to note the emergence of a cluster of images and texts, cookery, treatises, poetic expressions, objects and practices that are specifically profoundly important in the production of the of culture, if you will, broadly speaking in Iran of this of this period. So I make the project really takes note of these clusters of evidence that are related to food and taste and and this I mean, not only in terms of the sense of gustatory taste, but also in terms of that's the one that oftentimes dictionaries define it, but also as defined by the ability to judge and recognize, recognize what is good or suitable. In the personal Arabic context, it would be the term, so, or though, which is, in fact, a context to which I pay a great deal of attention in this project by looking at the link between painting texts and context, as well as, for instance, noting that this album page with the very sensuous sort of a reclining female figure with a dog lapping up liquid out of the bowl. And then to flowers, and then the poetic passages around which reference on the lower right hand corner of it, for instance, reference fruits, maybe, and, and in fact, connect fruit food love together in a way, add ability taste organs of taste and come together with notions of beauty and erotic undertones as it were. So I am, I'm thinking in terms of fluidities in imagination between the real and the ethereal, the, the staff which is present and tangible, and that which is evoked and intangible. So again, a familiarity is part of that as well as it were. But I want to focus my attention here in particular on rice and rice as the dishes made of rice and rice as in dishes made for rice, actually, and bring you a few sort of notes on where this goes. In the, in the painting of shot that must receiving one of the, not the. That's actually yes shot that must receiving one of the is back rulers in the murals of the audience hall of the chance to tune palace. You can see a number of activities amongst which music dancing, chatting, posing, all of that is part of the deal but, but also food delivery of food for instance up here food displayed all over the place, and dishes that would carry and present the food in all of these instances. The, the assumption and literature scholarship has tended to think of them as being imaginary being sort of evocations of feasts, but never thought of in terms of related to actual practices or perhaps evocative of events that took place in that same audience with these kinds of feasts, which are now sort of conventionally represented what one finds in these are this correspondence between vast murals. Smaller paintings in manuscripts such as you see on the lower right hand side, and actual objects of which the most spectacular display is the dense display at the top of the VNA highly recommend a visit there, just to look at how amazing it is to look at dishes in a stacked up actually in a museum. And there, what I'd like to pose here is or propose here is the variety of shapes that we find from, in fact, sources as well referenced. The variety of shapes of objects unusual in this period in porcelain and ceramics in fact, of which I show you bunch of little dishes and so forth. We hear, for instance, from from the order of shot utmost to host his contemporary Emperor of Mughal India homayun, where he orders, for instance in this farm on this, this directive, how the emperor should be hosted as he took refuge in Iran with every morning for breakfast, small dishes with with certain cheeses or or yogurt and and sweets and so forth. There are small dishes to be put in a vast tray and deliver singly in other words, each companion of the Emperor will get one of these trays. And so these dishes that we see small ones which we don't know otherwise what they are for are actually described in terms of what they should be for breakfast, for instance, to the Emperor or for courses of meals that were delivered in feasts. Otherwise, in fact, one of the most important things I point these again to you is the delivery of, for instance, meals for dinner, various rice dishes which are mixed with these are specially made rice dishes, which are supposed to be delivered in vast platters, but not as big as those trays but platters described to be specific with a certain depth and a certain depth and that these would be then carried per person per person of importance in other words not shared food out of the same container, but specific ones. And in paintings like the you can see here from the shop number of shot utmost, we find the trace. There is one young man walking out and delivering something which looks like a bejeweled rice if you will. I will point out to this one which is described in that order for delivery of dinner dishes to humayun as being a blue and white Chinese platter or porcelain with a lid, a domicile lid on top of it. These are part of, in other words, the specifics of what kind of food in what kind of dishes and under what conditions to be delivered and consumed as sort of a protocol, if you will, of dishes and dishes and indeed in these cases, we begin to the way I'm beginning to see it is how we patch together bits and pieces that come from an order and basically a royal farm on to archival material of the sort that relate to inventories to the dishes that are sitting for the most part in museums such as the V&A to evidence of wall paintings to evidence of of paintings in manuscripts as well as in pieces, cookery treatises as we come to see them. So, here, the specificity of the kind of platter, the language as it is called in this order of shot utmost to be specially used for the delivery of rice, the varieties of sizes and shapes of vis-a-vis the particular delivery mode and here I refer back again to these dishes with the lid on top, and then these platters for rice, smaller dishes for various kinds of foods, coffee cups, wine cups and wine bottles which are the varieties enormous in the context of the Safavid material. And then, in addition to those, we have eloquent objects which are extraordinarily unique in this period, plates and bowls that speak to their own function. Of those, I have gone slightly overboard and have put a number of them on my slides simply to demonstrate how, for instance, a bowl, the one in the Louvre, would reference drinking out of it, or how a dish will talk about what it is supposed to be delivering and how it is supposed to be experienced. These are unusual for the neighboring environment. In other words, we don't find them in the Ottoman context, we don't find them in the Mughal context, nor do we know of these kinds of dishes which are eloquent about what their own function is in the European or East Asian context. It's particularity of the sort of level of correspondence you find in these in the period of discussion here. And I show you just these two in order to say something about the fact that this is not only about the dishes for food, but also, for instance, a bucket for the bathhouse which says that it is a bucket meant to pour water over, for instance, the body of the beloved as the poem on the top bucket indicates. Now this object eloquence is different from what we know from earlier medieval Islamic material in which aphorisms and certain fixed phrases were used to speak to the good wishes and the health and prosperity of the owners. Rather, and here is what this object eloquence comes to play an important role in thinking about how food is enliven and aestheticizes the whole experience. In that we find, for instance, a dish, this is my star example where the, the epigraphic band is in fact reads or translates as when the sun turns yellow in the dark blue sky. And I am reminded of saffron rice on a lapis colored dish. And if you put the rice dish into that plate. What you do have in fact is this evocation of the poetic where the, the sun, the saffron rises into the blue sky as if that dish of within that dish of blue and white is activating that notion, the experience of, of the saffron rice. More, perhaps, importantly, is the way in which contemporary author chefs talk about the way in which they are bound, duty bound to colorfully present their dishes and speak to the, the specifics of how you compose a dish of food and deliver it in a ceramic dish in a chini, precisely the kind of dish that we find. And finally, and these are all invented recipes new invented recipes hundreds of them, which are at this moment really uniquely and only available to the elite to the rich. They are the foods of festivities and the court, but then eventually they trickle down to the larger population and they survive today as the so called Persian cuisine if you were to think about Persian food, these races are the distinguishing features of that. And I point again to the domicile lid on top of the dishes as on the right hand side painting. We hear that all Europeans and Armenian Syrian and Ottoman travelers to South Africa, Persia agree on the uniqueness and excellence as the words they use of the rice dishes in Iran. Shavdan the French jeweler traveler who was there in the 1660s says that Persian style of rice is quote the best esteemed of all Asia. And, in fact, my last word and, if I can turn the page. This is a very aesthetic as Syrian Armenian visitor who is linked or links between Aleppo in Syria, and as far on in this period, new Jolfa of as far on where the Armenians of as far on lived mostly. The rice and I quote the preparation of pillow, this kind of rice is quite remarkable. In fact, when one lifts the cover of a long plate, it's aroma is so sweet that the spirits of all are in revived by the admirable power of that food, and each one's appetite. What it was missing is awakened. It is this kind of a lifting of the lid, Sarah push, and that sense of awakening at the site of the food at the reading of the poem, if you will, poems are read out loud with a sort of poetic and musical voice. The waft of the, the smell of the food evoking the taste of the food, those experiences that no longer can be captured, except for these kinds of evocations, and the, and the praises that come as part of the sensation of the, of the rice, actually in other words this is sensation of rice and the experience of rice that can be brought about by way of composing these pieces of evidence. And that, I argue, and I hope I'm right, but he's going to tell me more about it, and is an entirely Iranian phenomenon. Thank you. Would you, would you like me to start or would you like to start. I would, whatever you prefer. I mean they are such different subjects. Yeah, but there are, but there are so many overlaps. Yes. So, I want to, if I may, I want to start with your last picture the mango. Yeah, which I think is is quite remarkable. Yeah, as it really does. If you can talk a little bit more about what you meant you kind of put it in and moved on. Mango and those oval shaped containers of designs and the color references that go back to mango actually. If you can speak a little bit more about how, how you think, I mean it's one thing you and I look at it. How do you think those were experienced in the time by those who would look at them. But it's such a wonderful question, and I would need to look more at the manuscript to make sure that those, when, when, when were those placed together right who was the compiler of that album. But what does seem very clear and this is also what I was hoping to ask you about is this. The, the compiler seemed to want the viewer to put together the fruit, the fruit itself. So the food, the ingredient with all the things that might come from that fruit from the taste itself to the potential pigment to the notion of a design in a mango shape which is so important in textile design, for example, the, the contemplation itself of the, the beauty of the fruit to its representation in this album. So they're making that link from the ingredient itself to all of its potentials within the aesthetic realm. And that's, I guess one of, so it was exciting for me to see that, that there was that historical recognition, I guess. Because one thing that I keep thinking about is what it's so simple, but what is the relationship between food and art. Those are obviously very, and one can approach it from so many directions and that's what I was hoping to ask you what how you see those in dialogue I guess both historically and now contemporaneously like what your own interests are in bringing these together. Yeah, I thank you, you're so clever turned it around. So, as soon as you talk about food nowadays, everybody thinks about the starships and oh it's all gone we you know the science of food is enormous and I have to say, I find myself completely lost in trying to read about the neuroscience of the senses that relate to food. It's absolutely enormous field and multidisciplinary. And for our historians it has been, and for the most part it has been more about documenting and more sort of a descriptive approach to food and manners of serving it and eating it and the things that are eaten and what is the narrative that goes around with and so forth. In our fields, they haven't been really explored at all. Ceramics or vessels for food and drink are amongst the most important components of what is called Islamic arts. And yes, all we know about them are the shapes, the types, the technologies, the sizes and very indexical for the most part. We also get to know and this is a cup. So it's for drinking and that is a wine bottle and so forth. But how do they actually function in a context where they are not just stacked up or put together in a book about ceramics, and their profiles go on. But how do they function when you put them into a context of use, and then try to evoke them I wanted to particularly point to that one. So the enthronement of Joseph, the story of Joseph is a really important one, the beautiful use of who is not in this team, but in its chronic variation and the Persian poetic variation is invited into the palace of Zalekha, who is the daughter of Potiphar's wife who is named in the Quran and Zalekha in order to prove the beauty of Joseph which was irresistible for her. She, she gives every woman in the room a fruit and the fruit varies according to the depiction of the artist, it could be an apple, an orange, you get a cucumber and a knife. But if Joseph arrives in the room, they all are so taken by his beauty they all cut their hands of the fruit in one. So here's this notion of blood dripping and they don't sense it in this case, this notion of a taste of that beauty of Joseph seems to be in these paintings at least or the poetic context to come through. So how's the language of speaking about those multi disciplinary ways of not just looking and discussing or describing but also thinking about those experiences that come together. So what you were talking when you were talking about about the mango or about those particular. You never talked about smell and I was very interested in hearing about smell, I mean I think of mango in terms of the taste of mango is contested right the Indians think that Egyptians I lived in Cairo Egyptians swear by theirs. There's mango contestation all over the place but ultimately it's not the taste it's actually the smell. That makes the distinction.  So how do we deal with this I mean I came across this thing of lifting the lid and that waft of the smell of the rice. I've eaten Persian rice and knows what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you wouldn't know what I'm saying it's, it's, it's that particular smell, and it's dry. You always come with your question about the or that some of the origins of these foods and a lot of those are they come to India. Yeah. And when you look in the 18th 19th century with many of those dishes, both in the cookbooks and in the written descriptions. People discuss the the final phase of cooking, which is done or the breath, where you seal the pot you then lift it, and the fragrant waters, like the cure the screw climb flower the rose water. That's the breath that you get when you lift the lid. And those are the same plants that are depicted in the natural history illustrations. But you get the scent only when it's in that cook the cooked phase. So I wonder, yeah, for the, for the company official who commissions these and this becomes an album and an archive. Are those experiences that you're talking about which are the things that you are they transfer or how are they or have they ever been transferred in other words, is this transference of that kind of information that is multi sensory is is only available to those who know what is a dam port. Right. Or also the, the Indian office library. Collectors. It's a great question. I mean, I think that some of the company officials do describe meals. Right. And some go into more details than others. You. They do have a, I mean, because Martin, as well as Antoine, we pull yeah, they write in their letters about how they're acquiring the reason why Martin wants to have so many rose petals is because he wants to distill that distill the rose water and he both gives it to people but it's also for sale because he knows how important. That is, as a, as a part of hospitality. Right. So he's absolutely aware of that and participating in it. But how do you, how do you get to that. What you're just talking about is how do you get to a memory right which is what. Which is what's so kind of precious about eating. And we all have it on a personal level there are moments in literature where one encounters that moments in poetry. And here like when you were talking with that beautiful connection between the lover and taste right. There's a phrase in order to the words. Kaba be sure to be sure to be right.  Poetically, and you can and also. So the sounds themselves lead one to it. And you, yeah, one does wonder how much is the food itself what's in the food and then the poetic imagination, which it seems like your vessels participate in. Yeah, that's my arguments. I don't have, I mean, let's say a hundred vessels that have survived. Maybe 20 will have epigraphic additions. But it's large enough in numbers to know that this was one category of significance. But we cannot tell which of these dishes were actually used. Right. So you are. All you can do is patch together bits and pieces of evidence and those ephemeral pieces of evidence to to intimate some knowledge of what would have been the experience of sitting in a, in a feast and these young men bringing dishes. In large numbers to to put in front of you what was it like to be able to read that poem written around that and it's not these are not shared plates. They are individual large plates but individual access to it.  And what else goes with it. The sounds and the. I once was taken by two artists to the home of one of them in as far as they know. But they talked to each other and they were walking around and they had things on the wall and they would look at it and one would come up with a poem that was relevant to the subject of the painting. And then they would have a conversation through the poetics of these paintings. We forget that that is part of it. You forget that looking at the paintings. Trigger upon in the mind of. We may not be accustomed to it. But that was the case of experience of those paintings.  Double page of a marketplace with the. Was it homes on site, or it's the narrative. It's a narrative of what happened. Yeah, but are they. What is what is happening. Yeah, there's an impact here far. There's far more text in our writings, right. I just showed one. Yeah. So if you don't know the poem, you can come up with a phone. Yeah, in other words, yeah, in that case, yeah, there's a narrative. Paintings. Yeah. And that's but that's one of the things that I think is so hard to access that I think we're both kind of wondering about that. Is it a single moment is it a personal moment. That one has in an intimate conversation where you have two artists who are looking at a painting together that's about them and their connection. Does it become more of a quarterly etiquette circumstance. Is it. There are these, and is the goal to. You can't obtain that it's also attractive. In other words, my problem more than any of the historical issues. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. I know I have a question, but I'm going to be a good host and look around the room to see if, if there are other questions as well. Thank you so much to both of you for this. Both fascinating presentations and the conversation so much enjoyed. I have a question for Suzanne. Firstly, I'm not an expert, but this is the first time I hear of anything like that. And I think it's extremely striking, compelling. I didn't really talk by the way this inside us maybe very hungry. And I may not be the only one. Can you tell us a little bit more about the coop of works with the inscriptions. It, they belong to specific period. What sort of book ends that period. We, we, you may not have, you know, answers to all these questions in which collections are they have they been spread all over the world or are they still primarily in Iran. Do they have other commonalities and the question I had is, and I know, because of my knowledge of moving into that again we may not have answers. How much do these dishes with the inscriptions permeate society to they belong only to sort of ceremonial. Feasting that we can imagine depicted at court, or does it spread a little bit perhaps in commerce and trade societies. I don't know. And again, I realize we may not have the answers but I wonder if the what qualifies these objects may begin giving some answers to these questions. Right. It's a really good point and if you look at ceramic. It's primarily these dishes, the ceramic pieces that I'm focusing on the production prior to this period is for the most part, three of these kinds of writings, the epic graphic, except for those medieval objects, which are filled with aphorisms and so forth. And one of the things that distinguishes them from this 16th 17th century material is that those are in Arabic. And these are in Persian. And this person is a really important transition actually. And then continues. So this is when it starts but it continues to be produced in 18th century 19th century and so forth. But it is specific to the Iranian world. And connects for instance these vast platters. They are shallow and have a lip, a fairly flat lip that is only found in the context of Saturday ceramics. And Ottoman ceramics tend to be smaller in diameter and deeper. It relates to the kind of food that the Ottoman court, for instance, consumed. So they are specific for rice, it seems. At least that's how my bits and pieces of information seem to point to. And therefore, are they spread all over the place. Most of what is available is actually in European American collections, Japanese collections and so forth. The ones that are at the V&A are very instructive because it's a huge number in the dense display and they were collected primarily in 19th century. And from Esfahan and from the houses of Esfahan, which is pointing to a sub-imperial infiltration of this practice, they were heirlooms, essentially, and in huge numbers they were taken. And not in the court. In Iran, those things in the court of the Safis did not survive as it was raided, unlike the Ottoman court, for instance. So on that level, you know, there are kind of little bits of evidence that make me think that eventually they became more widespread practice, part of the widespread practice. I'm not sure. I mean, the objects are the ones that are in the collections and I can look. They are the ones that are in fact at the V&A are 16th and 17th centuries. So how it goes to the, let's say, the wealthy, not the ordinary household, but the wealthier and each of Esfahan, let's say, merchant communities, is where they have actually been collected from. That's the primary evidence. I thought you were saying that therefore they don't mean that they're less posh. Yeah, I had a question about it. So first of all, thank you for two amazing talks and sort of insights and different kinds of things. I was so struck, Holly, with by something that you said and I think this will go to both your talks but about things that animals were ingesting to flavor their flesh. Right. And I think that this idea of the distance between the, what we now call farm to table was sort of the fields and what is on your plate and then I think, Holly, in your talk, there was one particular example of agricultural fields, let's say in gardens of course but agricultural fields and I think in one of yours where it was kind of you have the table and you had somebody kind of telling the soil in the same frame, which I think it's quite interesting. And I think I was just curious about what the, I mean, first of all, in some sense what role the senses play as well in between these spaces because you have this kind of very fragrant, very sort of intense food plate, that kind of nexus happening and then the agricultural field of the garden is probably quite a fragrant space but then the agricultural field like it's sweat and toy, you know, it's earthy. There's a difference and I was curious about whether and I think, as you were saying there are limitations to what we can experience through the visual. And so, of course, we are thinking about it in context with text and so with that text, either in the kind of the text that you're looking at, both in both your context but also whether there were later on, with their letters was Claude Martin writing about it were other people writing about sort of both agricultural production was that such an important part of sort of revenue and not just revenue collecting, but also will sort of export and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a fantastic question and it. There's things so big like so economic economic histories yield a lot of information. What was being planted when is it what are the. But then moving to other levels which is exactly what you're saying like how do you. How do you move from so if you're looking at older cookbooks. They'll give you names, right, like a pearl below. What does a pearl below me. Exactly. Right. So, then you start to shop right and then and you read a lot of cookbooks and you look at painting. And then, like one chef I spoke to talked about. You have to tie the, the, the white of an egg into the silk so that when it cooked with the chicken, you could then unwrap it and those times become the pearls, right, like you wouldn't get there from the name, right, you have to have this unbelievable impression and that's part of the fun and I think a lot of contemporary chefs play with that a lot, right, he'll take a name, and then they'll spin, right, which actually it has a lot of creative potential and should be a lot it. Yeah. But there are these gaps, right between the historical record. And where you move to something else and that's where I think some of the knowledge of kind of knowing, and this was again just, this was just a cook who realized that the Siberian crane that people were talking about in the recipe books, traveled over the cashmere, the, the saffron fields and cashmere right so then that's how they're ingested. And then that suddenly changes how you think about the recipe. And so there's just an ingenuity of cooks and ingredients and bringing that all together and you do see that. And the kind of exactly and the seasonality. And there's just a real, a real beauty to that. And, but, but I think it is this kind of cobbling and that's why when I first doing this research where I was trained as an art historian but I wasn't necessarily doing our historical research. I started to think well actually is art history, actually a wonderful methodology for approaching ephemeral arts because sometimes what you're dealing with is absent when you look at the ceramics ceramics are made to hold food, but we almost never talk about never the food. I'm missing. Yeah, but yet I don't I that's I'm so curious and I'm curious forever and audience actually like is art history. Does it actually provide the tools to come at some of this ephemerality. I mean, just to say hopefully the questions. We can talk about through the different talks as well so I think that hopefully it'll be an ongoing conversation with all of you so just on the. Let's move to what how we just said about if art history is the proper tool for that. I actually think it is, but I think it is art history as practice with regards to fields that are not of the origins of art history as a discipline. The reason is that the discipline is changing because people who look at different representations and expressions throughout spatial or our material have different problems to deal with like the ones that we face. Perhaps it's time for our history to think that it's a discipline, it's doors are open that it is with these other you know those who practice things around African art history are teaching us things. We never thought of, for instance, that that's at least hindering whether it's the right tool. Yeah, just on the on the topic of we think of ceramic food. We have a comment from Sabrina Brown online saying thank you to you Nadine for helping me visualize how how the saffron rice would have looked on our lap this colored dish. Yeah, we do have a couple of other questions from online so I think I'm just going to read. I can do both and then maybe you can answer them quite specific. So Sujata me gamma asks, when, when are local names of plants and languages beyond English first used in botanical drawings in India difficult question. And what might be what might the presence of these multiple languages revealed to us. And also how wonderful that the text on the diverse vessels related to the food or drinks served in them. How can we access the food cultures of those not so privileged through those these diverse vessels we talked about a little bit already. I'll just go on to the next question so we can answer them together. Georgia mafia Lee begatti asks a question about the cultivation of flowers. Could they also be planted next to one another depending on the combined perfume they would create. She's really interesting point. And she also has a question for Professor by what it was common to chew clothes when talking to the shower or in gatherings. Would it be possible to trace if specific spices were chewed before eating so as to highlight the taste of the food itself. Great questions. Thank you. I know it is. Go for it. I just want to talk about, for instance, the show that there are this treatise on on agriculture, which has a chapter on me a treatise on agriculture with a chapter on gardening and I think we might have to go back and look at that. It was written early in the 16th century, probably gathering knowledge of the 15th century more for the benefit of the emerging moogles in South Asia. But it's a really important documentation. And there you see, for instance, in the garden. What flowers, what bush. And so forth. So, can you think of those in the Indian context, further than, you know, Absolutely. And you're such a wonderful, wonderful garden. Just thinking of, I mentioned Nicholas Ross. And Ebycoke has. I think, and she's had. Because scholars in replanting so replacing the colonial lawn with the orchards and the flowers at the orchards would be a wrap or bet. Also have bees and certain birds come at certain times and then you'd have the sound of certain birds. And that was very, very much that seems to art of the garden. And I imagine that that, that, yeah, what do you Yeah, I think that's that's the point is really it's partly about the gardens and the fragrances but also the fruits and vegetables and what you can actually extract from there the herbs you know that the medieval gardens of the monasteries like the one in the cloisters up on top of the Manhattan Island is is a really great example of the kinds of gardens that we know from an evil world in Europe, but it is also crucially important to consider. We never hear about kitchen gardens that I know of. But there must be an aspect of the kitchen garden in those kinds of garden designs as well. But I was also thinking about objects that are particularly made for encapsulating protecting smell of things like rosewater. You know, these glass things for rosewater which is prevented from evaporating for as long as possible. So, should just ask question, my dear colleague, which you might want to to think about her question about. Was it about the dishes and if, if those kinds of eloquent dishes appear in the in a more pedestrian version. No, or if they did, they haven't survived. Survivals of these are usually related, especially of earlier period related to the elites. What's interesting with the rice like with the the the rice dishes you're speaking about when they're coming to India at least in the histories that I've read of the cuisine of baking rice so the pulau or what also becomes a very on in India, that those were coming these huge pots right that were brought in order to feed huge numbers of people and in Lucknow at least you still see them feeding huge numbers of people so like in Lucknow. And this is part you know, it can sometimes be hard to parse what is Laura and what is. But the Nawab Asif Udalla there's a time of great famine and and some of the famine architecture at this time is really interesting. The Nawab obviously built huge building than the these the the pots to create rice would, he would have them cooking outside of religious structure connected to she is yeah and you still see that today during the those times of year. But then you also have kind of huge granaries that company officials and that they're also erecting sometimes to be filled sometimes not to be filled. So this idea that you would also have to counter famine is something that one really important yeah. Think about as well. And you do see that's what I found so interesting in some of the compilations of natural history illustrations that you have some of these very elite goods very lucrative goods, like rosewater. But then you also have just your basic grains that are so critical. And I think some of those dishes, they're made for the populace they're not necessarily made for the elites and it's just so interesting. But they can be just they can be as like I always think about making yogurt right where you you're making yogurt and clay vessels because the clay absorbs that extra way and thickens the yogurt so it makes it more delicious.  Yeah, by the way that just on the on the level of beating the larger population. The Ottoman court had chickens that were also producing for food given away to the populace as did Safavid court. And I imagine Mughal court. So none of them made the food only for the consumption of the court and its festivities, but also to be shared as a as a form of barricade, you know, that kind of generosity and an obligation action. Before we close just going back to the clothe question and the language question of where, you know, what the wind of the languages in the botanical paintings come in, or even what they signify as well as what relevance it has for scholars today, or also then it's such a wonderful question. I mean, in some ways they work as like a Rosetta stone, I think to a certain where you'll have the different names, but sometimes you'll have a linear name that's just like the very, very, like vegetable, you know, like it's a very generic name. The other languages are much more specific and it's been. And they can be in different hands as well, which are showing kind of the different knowledge is that are entering into the image. And that's why the inscription. What the artist depicts and what is inscribed can can offer different types of knowledge and I think that's what I've at least and again this is a thanks to Henry know to what's been so interesting in looking at just the kind of data set of the natural natural history drawing that they're, they're being gathered for the scientific purpose. But they can actually offer if you look at them slant a slant they can offer other types of knowledge and connection to the land and innovation. Also kind of exposes a sort of new informant work that's being created and cultivated. I was at Georgia who asked about right before you eat. Yeah. No clothes before you meet the show and so were there other things that you would chew before you eat enhance the taste of food. Not that I know. They come in from this time period, what we understand they come in courses. Start actually with what Europeans all talked about as being dessert, what are they doing they serve the dessert cars. And they did and we run me and still eat the dessert first. So, to get the appetite going. You start with fruits and sweets. But to have something in particular. It's on a, on a, you have to look a little bit more in. We should have thought ahead and planned for you know sort of baked rice and saffron but we don't we don't have that apologies but we have wine in the next room so I think we'd say big thank you and then carry on our conversations.


Well, hey there, I'm Sandy Olnok. Welcome to my YouTube channel where today I'm going to be painting a rabbit or a hare, I guess. The most popular view of a hare that I think there is in watercolor land. So why is that? While I work on the sketch, let me tell you a few things. One is that tomorrow is my birthday, March 27th, and today is the 26th. So the 26th, 27th, 28th, I am having a birthday sale, and the sale is over on my art classes website. So if there's a class that you are interested in taking, feel free to go over there and sign up for it. There's a link in the doobly-doo, coupon code, and everything is going to be down there. I also have a sale that is continuing through the end of the month on my fine art, that is on my fine art website, links down below for that, and the coupon code for that. That one continues to the end of the month, and the class's sale is just for these three days. So I wanted to let you know about that. Why is it that business owners end up giving presents to everyone else when it's our birthday, but whatever. Happy to do that. I also want to let you know that I may be out of pocket by now. I am recording this voiceover like a week or ish earlier than today. And at the time that I am recording this, my heart is somewhere else. My mom is in the hospital once again, and it's not looking good. I might need to jump on a plane within hours of when I'm recording this. So that's why I figured I'd get this done so I could get it scheduled and not have to think about that at least. So pray for my mom if you're able to. I will put an update in the doobly-doo with her status as of the date that this publishes. But also if that happens and you order some of my fine art, I may or may not be able to get it shipped to you right away. I usually try to do that within like a day or two of your purchase, but that might need to wait until I get back. So I will put a note on that website if that happens. Just so everyone will be aware of that. So let's get on to this hair, this rabbit, this thing that is the most popular of all hairs on the internet. If you Google for water-colored rabbit, water-colored hair, you will find pictures of like a gajillion people painting basically this view but with just the neck, not the whole body like I'm doing. My photo reference had more of the body in it and I wondered why is that? What is it about this view? Just like the two eyes sticking out of the side, two ears up and a neck down below the face. And I think it's because there's not as much drawing involved because the side profile of a rabbit can look a little awkward, like just the shape of it, depending on what kind of rabbit it is, can look a little stumpy. And if you make it too long, like the schnoz is too long, it looks weird. Or if it's one that has a longer nose on it, then if you make it too stumpy, then that looks weird. There's just a lot of opportunities when you're doing more drawing for more errors to enter in. So I think that might be why. But for me, like this looks like a psychotic hair. Like the two big eyeballs staring at you. It also got me wondering if that many people paint this thing including like some lady on Etsy. She just paints this particular view like different colors and stuff. She paints it all different ways, but she just paints this rabbit over and over and over and over and over again and sells them. And God bless her. Like if you you're the kind of person that can paint the same thing, that's awesome. I am not that kind of person. So I am just going to paint it this once. And I think once I got this one painting done, I'm good with it. I'm going to put it in my shop. So if you love this rabbit and you want to take this rabbit home with you, yeah, it'll be in part of the sale over on my site. So go snag it quickly if you want it. Anyway, the colors that I'm using here are yellow ochre and moon glow. If you haven't recognized them, they're two of my favorite colors to use together when I'm just going to use a limited color selection. And I didn't want to get really complicated with this one. And the two colors make a brown together. And you know why that is? It's because they are complements. There's a, you know, on the color wheel, there's a whole thing about complements, the color that's opposite of color on the color wheel. Those two colors together generally make a brown because one is usually made up of two colors. So the moon glow will be made up of, you know, technically it's a purple, so it'll be red and blue mixing that with the yellow gives you red, blue and yellow together, which is why you get brown. And the same thing happens with every pair of complements. One has two colors in it, you know, and I know that technically they have pigments and blah, blah, blah, but this is a general color theory I'm talking about. So with this one, the first pass that I do on any painting is generally just a loose wash with a large brush. I'm using a number eight brush and then I start, you know, mixing all the colors. I love doing wet in wet. And when I'm painting a large area, I try to keep the whole area wet so that I don't end up with edges that are going to dry in weird ways. But it means kind of keeping it high all the time on the whole paper and seeing where everything's at, like how wet or how dry is it? And knowing where the areas are where you can stop, like I knew I could separate the ears from the rest of the body because there's in the photo. There was a little more white going on between them. So the connection between them wouldn't be mandatory having to be painted at the same time so I could do the ears separately. But lots and lots of things go through my brain when I'm painting something like this. But I usually try to get a plan together for how I'm going to approach whatever the subject is. So, you know, knowing that I was going to be using these two colors then that that's kind of where I started deciding to do the whole wash of the yellow ochre and then start dropping in all of the moon glow. And then in some areas like the inside of the ears, I wanted them to feel more gray and the moon glow when it's really light can feel more like a gray than a brown when it doesn't have the yellowish color mixed in with it. So that kind of allowed me to do the just the kind of color mixing that I'm working on the eyes. I did pop in a little bit of I believe it was New Gamboge and a little bit of one of my reds. I don't remember which red I dipped into might have been Quinn Rose just for a little bit more punch in the color. But I'm going to go back in and put more detail into the rest of the hair. But for now, I just wanted to get, you know, the ears and everything done. So I'm going to start layering in some deeper color now. And I'm going to speed this up because it is late enough. And I want to get another video edited and ready to roll because that's how I am. I thought while I'm doing this layering, I would maybe talk about mom a little bit because she is one of the reasons that I am who I am. My mom is determined if nothing else. We nearly lost her a number of times in the last few months to any number of ailments. She's had COVID, she's had cancer surgery. She's just been through the wringer. And at 94, I am amazed that she's still hanging on and fighting. She's quite the woman. And I think I get a lot of my stick to it ofness from her because when she's determined, she is just absolutely determined. When she's, you know, getting taken care of by doctors, she tells them what their job is and what they should do. God bless her. She's just, she's an amazing woman. And I am looking forward to getting to see her again here shortly and getting to see my sisters as well. But another reason that I wanted to talk about mom a little bit is that mom collects rabbits, or at least she used to before she lived in a small facility. So she used to collect rabbits and had all kinds of little figurines and, you know, all the things. I did not collect rabbits, but now I collect rabbits because I think my sisters have kind of told her, you know, I don't really want your rabbits. So she's been mailing them to me for a long time. So I have not the full collection, but every once in a while for birthdays and Christmas, I used to get rabbits that I knew had been sitting in her China cabinet for a long time. And when she had to downsize, she sent me a lot of the rabbits. So I've got them sprinkled in various places. One of my favorites is in the studio and it's a yellow rabbit. I will post a picture of that over on my blog. If you want to see mom's yellow rabbit, it was kind of a perfect size, perfect shape, perfect color and everything for me. I have had to glue on the rabbit's ear several times because it broke in transit and every once in a while it just escapes from his little body, but he's a cutie. And regardless of how mom gets through this latest bout, that is going to be one of my little treasures to have for mom. Now, once I finished the rabbit, I decided to put a background in. I almost didn't because everybody else on the Googles paints this rabbit on white background. And I decided, meh, I'll put something else back there. Now there's a whole video on painting Boca and doing so, I guess painting and drawing Boca on doing it in watercolor as well as in color pencil and alcohol markers and stuff. So if you'd like to see that one, I will put a link to that in the doobly-do because I did forget to film this part apparently. So I only caught the whiskers for this last phase, but basically I took, while it was wet, I took a baby wipe, wrapped it around my finger and just lifted color out of the background. That background is my new chromium oxide green color. I kept that down to just one color. And this is white gouache. And I also used some of the Moonglow for the whiskers that go out into the background area so that they would be seen because white wouldn't be seen out there. So there is meh rabbit. And I will put links to stuff in the doobly-do as I always do. So if you want to know more about whatever mom's progress is, I'll put an update on the blog. There'll be links for the classes and links for the fine art sale and everything, all in the doobly-do. So take advantage of the sale and I will see you guys again soon. My second video this week will be on Friday instead of Saturday. So I'll see you then.


Hey, everyone, it's Dr. Howard. We're beginning our discussion now on behavior deceleration techniques, specifically positive punishment. Now, if you've gotten to this point and you have not yet watched the two earlier videos about misconceptions and behavior analysis, misunderstandings about what the terms positive and negative mean, and the video on form versus function, you should really check those out before starting these three videos on positive punishment. This first video is just going to focus on the history of mental health treatment and what I'm focusing on here are some of the historical and unfortunately kind of inhumane ways in which we have in the past tried to decelerate or stop behavior that our culture considers dangerous, disruptive, or disgusting. So those are the three D's that we really talk about when we consider what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. If it's dangerous to the client or people around the client, if it's disruptive to the environment around the client, for instance, an agency where the client may live or the culture, the neighborhood in which they live their everyday life and disgusting, things that we would consider completely inappropriate in terms of hygienic standards or even interpersonal standards, those are the places that we tend to focus. And unfortunately in our history, we've used some procedures that would be considered probably inhumane by today's standards. I want to take you through briefly what those standards have been and this long-term view of where we are now when we talk about how we choose programs, how we intervene and change behavior.  So when we talk about the history of mental health treatment, it really helps to go all the way back to our earliest kind of pre-recorded history. And we know from looking at archaeological findings that some early tribes, some pre-historical groups, tended to view abnormal behavior behavior that's dangerous or unusual as caused by supernatural influences. These could range from everything like demonic possession to intervening by a deity or a God. And in favorable ways, this could be viewed as an actual intervention by your God. For instance, we have early shamans. But in some ways, if the behavior is disruptive, dangerous, disgusting, if it doesn't fit within what's accepted and it's not helpful to the group, then it would probably be seen as the intervention of an agent bent on destruction. And so in early, early, early treatment, the focus there would be on somehow exercising that spirit out through whatever methods possible. Maybe this is what we traditionally think of as exorcism. Maybe there's a right or some sort of religious proceeding that takes place where you try to remove that supernatural influence from the organism. Or sometimes there were more physical or direct interventions. In this case, one that we know of that was used commonly in these groups is called treponing. And this would be when a hole was either cut or drilled into the skull to allow spirits out of the body with the belief that that would release the spirit and the behavior would go away. Now, of course, you know, Stone Age brains, we aren't always the best at reasoning and decision-making. It would make sense that you put the hole in, people act a little bit better after the hole's gone into the organism. But was that due to a spirit being let out or is there another confounding variable, such as, well, now you have an organism whose experience, significant pain and trauma, is this the side effect of shock? And there's no evidence to suggest that treponing actually manages or treats behavior. So this is a very, very early example of one of the ways in which we tried to intervene to change or to ameliorate some of the symptoms associated with mental illness or that we really try to change a client's behavior. Now, moving forward a little bit, you see that in recorded history and in antiquity, some would argue that mental illness and personality come from these balancing of different chemicals or different what we're called humors in the body. Now, this is the foundation of most early medicine, this idea that the body, of course, tries to maintain homeostasis. We're familiar with this from general psychology, from biology, and this is widely accepted that the body should function a particular way. And when there's an imbalance in some way, then that can really mess up the system. So in ancient treatment, what we're talking about are methods that are meant to bring these four humors back into alignment. So the easiest explanation would be, for instance, if you have a sanguine temperament, you have a personality that's very gregarious, very outgoing, very fun-loving, and if it's too much, right? For instance, if you're experiencing symptoms that we might call mania where you're not thinking clearly, you're not rationalizing, you're a little bit out of control, then a person may recommend that you bring yourself back into homeostasis or back into alignment, you balance your humors by getting rid of some of that excess blood that you have. These would be things like bloodletting or using leeches. So this is ancient times, but you see that this form of homeostasis or balance in treatment actually continues well into 17, 1800s, and we see echoes of that when we talk about the ways in which psychoactive medications are used to balance neurotransmitters. We have the same philosophy there where one of the neurotransmitters may be out of alignment. So what we're going to do is supplement those neurotransmitters either by adding more or by adding an agonist that's gonna mimic the effects of the actual neurotransmitter or we're going to use an antagonist to block the neurotransmitter to make sure it doesn't come through. In modern treatment, that has some pretty good effectiveness. There's not as much support here again to suggest that balancing these bile, the blood, the phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, that that's going to be effective at changing behavior and managing any kind of mental illness. When we come forward a little bit into periods of time that we might call medieval times, that we might call the dark ages, it's kind of an uncharitable moniker that we give to those times. You see that between the 12 and 1500s, what we're doing to try to manage behavior is a lot of aggressive physical corporal control and body modification. So when we move into this period, you see that it doesn't matter what the behavior is. So long as you are not a disruption to the group, to the culture, to your neighborhood, to your society, that's what we're working on. We see things like beatings and burnings where you would try to, for instance, get the spirit out of you through actual branding. You see that there would be similar to how we might work in animal husbandry, some castration or removing parts of the body. For instance, if you gelled an individual, if you remove part of their reproductive organs, just like we do with dogs and cats or domestic animals, then that may calm the individual. There was also a belief in animism, this idea that different creatures had different properties. So for instance, if you wanna have a greater constitution, if you wanna be healthier, then it might help to get a transfusion of ox blood because ox are known as being very hardy animals and they can stand up to a lot of experiences in that way. So getting that transfusion is gonna give you the spirit or the essence of the animal and it's gonna help change the way that you behave. So if you wanna improve your health or if you wanna be calmer, maybe you need to get an injection of owl blood to increase your wisdom and your calmness. So these were widely used. And of course, one that we are much more familiar with, lobotomy was used intermittently and it became really, really very popular in the 1900s. So 19, I believe in the 50s, it became phenomenally popular as a form of treatment so much so that people were actually given correspondence courses on how to learn how to lobotomize people and then could just sort of drive from town to town offering this as a medical service. And we see that this started actually in the middle ages or what we might call medieval times prior to the Renaissance. Moving into the Renaissance, again, the focus really was on how do we make sure that folks who experience this kind of disruptive behavior, how do we make sure that we're protecting the populace from the client? How do we keep society safe but often at the expense of the person who's experiencing those symptoms and what you would find, especially in European countries like France, is that people who experienced madness, right? Or people who were considered lunatics. Again, this was back when we believed that it was tied to tied to the moon and the phases of the moon. People who experienced madness would be put into prison. The idea there being, we just need to protect society from the person who experiences the mental illness. So unfortunately, what that means is you have a person who may not be in their right mind. You have a person who may be needs, that support needs additional care. And now they're actually in a general population with hardened criminals.  And so many people saw that during this period of time when folks were simply being incarcerated for their mental illness, that the people who would be victimized in this arrangement were actually the person experiencing the mental illness. So because of this, we see that there was a huge movement towards the use of of asylums. We have a modern perspective of what an asylum means, but at the time, consider that that these asylums were something very, very different, right? We had people coming in and taking people out of prison or taking people out of living in barns when their families couldn't manage them or couldn't have them in the house, taking people off the streets. And we now begin to recognize that a mental illness may be a medical issue. Now, this was around the time that we started noticing the relationship between syphilis, the sexually transmitted disease, and neuro syphilis, one of the long-term side effects or one of the long-term effects of having syphilis, okay? Neuro syphilis is where your brain matter actually starts to break down a little bit and a person who might otherwise be normal then develops these symptoms of madness because of the way that their brain reacts to their illness. So now that we see that this is affecting otherwise normal members of society, now we start to believe that, well, maybe something else is going on here. Maybe it's not that they're mad. The Philippe Pannell really helped advocate this idea that madness or mental illness is a medical condition. This requires treatment. It's not simply enough to throw people in jail or keep them in the attic where no one knows that cousin Steve is really messed up. We wanna take people. We wanna separate them out from a prison population, separate them out from any kind of victimization they might receive. And we wanna focus on finding what's actually causing the disorder. Now, even within the asylum system, we're still going back to forms of treatment that would focus on things like homeostasis. You might have ice baths to reduce the heat or the temperature of the mind if the brain is overheating due to the madness then we're gonna balance that through the use of ice baths or we might still use some forms of physical pain in order to manage that condition. But in this case, what's happening is folks are taking clients and moving them into these special facilities, these special hospitals. And these hospitals really were at the start, these very therapeutic environments. So what you see on the right are all of the staff who are working at this hospital, especially when you see them in France and England in Germany, these asylums are created and opened in these kinds of idyllic settings. These are much more like what we might think of as spas or a kind of country-based hospital setting than they are for what we in our modern society think of as asylums as these kind of scary places where people go. Contemporary writers at the time speak to the value of these asylums because we're really talking about a complete and dramatic change in your lifestyle where in your everyday life, you may be running around and stressed and you're in the city and everything's dirty and there's pollution everywhere. Asylum offers special protection. It's a very simple life. You can go there, you can get better, you're protected. If you really are just completely messed up, if you are mad, then you can be as mad as you prefer because now you're in this place, you're protected, you're cared for, it's structured and you can do that in a way that's not gonna harm society. Some believe even that by being in these settings, by just going through the process of being mad that some people would emerge from the depths of madness. They could work through it and through that process become saner, more stable functioning members of society. Now, of course, this is some but not all asylums and we discovered that Dorothea Dix is a famous researcher. She was a journalist who worked to get herself admitted to an asylum and ran one of the earliest exposés on these asylum-based treatment centers and discovered that what would happen in the treatment center was not always, I did like it was not always safe. In this case, Dorothea was physically abused, physically harmed by staff members working there and we discovered through this that while this was sort of the spirit of the asylum that in practice, many asylums were still places where people would experience significant abuse and there were calls, there were polls for reformation but at that time, really focused on how can we make sure that these are treatment facilities where people are being cared for but they're getting the care that they need and they deserve. We had made some changes through time and we were seeing that there was improvement and in America, we had a number of state schools where folks who experienced a variety of illnesses could go. You have places like state hospitals for the mentally ill, state schools for a condition at the time that would have been called mental retardation. We would refer to that now as an intellectual or developmental disability and again, these were being sold in very much the same way even though it's about 80 years later, these were being sold as very similar kinds of institutions. These are places where people can go and be safe and they get structured care and support and we didn't always do our due diligence as a society making sure that people were being cared for in the way that we thought that they were. So for instance, in the 70s, Geraldo got his big break by exposing this New York state hospital called Willowbrook and he broke this news of patient abuses at Willowbrook and by abuses, we're really talking about the type of behavior that's caused by just significant systemic neglect and a complete claim over population with respect to the number of staff that were available. But it was part of a larger culture at the time where doctors were recommending that families actually place their children, place their loved ones in these hospitals to make sure that they could get the best care possible but it wasn't always provided. Now that material is incredibly graphic but I would encourage you to follow the link in the description below, watch that video because I think it really helps highlight what can happen when we have these aspirational goals and the dangers of what happens when we don't have the resources to provide and make sure that the quality of care is as it should be. So as a result of exposing what's happening at Willowbrook, as a result of the things that Geraldo Rivera is reporting at the time, there was a national backlash and people were shocked. People were just completely amazed at the quality of treatment that children were receiving. These are children who are supposed to be in special schools where they can learn and become better people and they weren't getting it. So there was a national movement toward de-institutionalization and you can drive around the country even today and see that there are these huge empty buildings where people used to live and don't anymore because in some states, for instance, like Alaska, as a result of places like Willowbrook or places like institutions where foster children would be housed for large periods of time, some states have completely outlawed large state schools and large state treatment facilities but many others adopted or moved toward treatment models within their mental health departments that would idealize something that we call community-based treatment. So community-based treatment is where the person either stays within their own home or they stay in a home-like environment so that they can experience treatment in a naturalistic setting. This could be, for instance, a child who experiences an intellectual or developmental disability staying at home with mom and dad, but then a caregiver comes in to help coach and support mom and dad. This could be a person who experiences profound intellectual disability. Maybe they can't stay with mom and dad anymore so they live in a group home with other folks who experience intellectual disability and then as a group, they stay in the community, they learn skills and they learn those in the natural environment so they can be supported by the natural environment. That's really the key there. There's a higher visibility of people who are different and when you're in your own natural environment, you can harness not only the folks who are paid to be there with you at your staff, but you can take your client out into the community and they can make friends, they can meet people, they can meet people in their environment, they find what they love, they are people. So the services that are really meant, the spirit of services in community-based treatment are empowered services. Ways of keeping the individual who experiences the mental illness, the intellectual disability, what have you, a connected member, a connected part of their community. And you often see this very high overlap between community-based treatment and person-centered planning. The beauty of person-centered planning is that we're talking about a treatment modality where the client themselves are an active part of their own treatment. So it isn't necessarily that look at this behavior change program. It works for kids with autism, so I'm gonna give it to every child with autism, not, no. What it does is it recognizes that everyone is different, right? That what works for you may not work for me and vice versa. And in person-centered planning, what we're talking about is considering the whole person. Not just a problem behavior, but what is it about that person? What are their wants, their needs, their desires, their drives, their hopes, their dreams? What is it that we can do to help support them to recognize their desires and their interests, to capitalize on those, and help make sure that they're reaching their longer-term goals? So we really wanna be thinking about the future of the person. We wanna make sure that, for instance, Rebecca here, isn't just learning the skills necessary to make her calm and docile in her group home, but rather that her group home is supporting her so that she can learn the skills necessary to grow up, to get her own apartment, to live independently, to have a job, to meet someone she cares about, to have a family, to have whatever it is that Rebecca wants in life, right? That's the beauty of person-centered planning. And when we talk about behavior analysis, what I want you to realize is that at its spirit, at its core, behavior analysis is person-centered planning. So when you consider form versus function, we're not just interested in figuring out how do we reduce your problem behavior. We wanna figure out how do we teach you the skills necessary to live your whole life in the best way possible. All of the principles that we've described are universal. So reinforcement, shaping, punishment, these are universal principles, but that doesn't mean that the way that I use reinforcement is gonna be the same for you as it is for me, right? Your reinforcer is not my reinforcer. A punisher for you, if I even want to use one, which usually I don't, a punisher for you may not be a punisher for me and vice versa. So it's not enough that we're just adopting the same treatment modality for everyone. We really wanna carefully consider the person, the function of their behavior, and to develop a treatment program around that individual that's gonna help them support and live their best life. Now, remember, all of our clients are unique, so this is not a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment. What we're talking about is we're gonna find something that works for each individual and we're gonna carefully analyze is this working, is this not? We know that what works for one client won't work for another client, except that we may use those same universal principles. We may capitalize on the fact that organisms will do things that pay off again and again. We may use the principle of reinforcement but the actual procedure that we develop, that we refine is gonna be different for each of our clients. Because each client needs that unique plan to meet their own individual needs and their own individual goals. So, I hope that this better helps explain why when we talk about moving forward, why you wanna start in one place and not immediately jump right to punishment, that this makes sense. So if you have any questions about the content, please feel free to leave a comment in the description below. I know that this is a gross over simplification of the history of mental health treatment but I really want you to have that context for why we wanna focus on person-centered planning, why we wanna focus on reinforcement first as a behavior change procedure and do be sure to check out the next video where we actually talk about punishment as an intervention and talk about some of the strengths and limitations of that intervention. I'll see you guys next time.


So, I don't know if you guys know my story, but I've shared it here before where around 29 and 30, I've been building my business for three and a half years. I've been doing it with a full-time job while going back to school to do pre-rex for my passion in Chinese medicine, and I had another part-time job working for an acupuncturist, the front desk, 7 a.m. And it was the culmination of these years and years and years and years of overdoing it, even though I was eating right and working out and never missing those things. It was the stress of constantly having to go and feeling like I didn't have enough time that eventually got me sick around the age of 30, and I just saw this explosion of symptoms regarding stress that I'd never had before, not even once in my entire life. So, even though I freaked out and even though now, almost two years later, I'm almost back to normal, I want to share the biggest lesson I learned from this experience and why I think it'll help you as a November challenge. What's up guys? I'm here, author of the book, Master of the Day. Now look, I've also included that free goal-setting worksheet. It's right there in the description box there below. When you click that, it's going to let you download this template that I used to set up and have really my best year, year after year, and progressively get better. So click that first link in the description, download it, and maybe this video will give you some ideas on what to actually put there. So think about this, all right? Put yourself in my shoes. What happens when every day internally, you're thinking, I don't have enough time to do what I want? Eventually, you start rushing, right? You start eating faster. You rush in the morning. You cut corners. You literally don't have time to do the quality job you need for your job, for your health, for your sleep, for your relationships. And so that's exactly what ended up happening to me. And I was always rushing, even though you couldn't always see that I was physically rushing. In my head, I was basically screaming, I don't have enough time to do everything. And that is the belief that then affected my life and eventually made me sick. So I want to introduce you to November's Challenge, which is super simple. The habit is no internal rushing and then surrender. And there are some nuances here, but that's the gist of it. Super simple. No internal rushing and then surrender if you still feel like you have to rush. So let's break this down a little bit and make it more tactical. So the very first thing here is when I say internal rushing because you may not be running around or you may realistically be if you are internally rushing, but it's the feeling of I have so much to do and not enough time. And it's the belief more than anything that will eventually affect your actions, right? Because if I believe I don't have enough time, I will physically start to rush.  So what do you actually do if you have objectively a lot on your plate? The first thing is remove things until you don't feel like you're rushing anymore. So what happened with me was I realized that, hey, waking up, doing an hour long morning routine, going to school, my classes and seeing patients nine to five, going to the gym five to seven and then working for four hours a day on my business until 11, that was not physically possible for a human to do in the long run. So I had to figure out, what am I going to cut away the very first thing? Remove until it removes the feeling of rushing. What do I have to parse away? And for me, that was really difficult because I realized, okay, then maybe what I have to do is I'm not going to see friends during the week at all before Friday. That'll save me an hour a day. I'm actually going to do my workouts four days a week instead of five or six days a week. I'm actually going to reduce the hours of my business from four to two and a half. That rooms an hour and a half a day. And so the very first thing is if you are rushing and you know you're it's impacting your quality of life and your quality of your work and your relationships. Don't try to change any belief. Don't try to convince yourself of anything. Remove your schedule. Chop it up. Remove things until it objectively feels like I have margin in my day now. Now the second thing here is that little PS to asterisk is surrendering. So this is something I'm working on a lot because I really suck at it. But it's just this idea that I'm going to surrender to the fact that I have maybe I've parsed away those things in my schedule and I still don't have enough time. I don't have enough time to be the successful person I want while having a family. That's realistic. Okay. I surrender. Boom. I don't have enough time to maybe go to the gym six days a week and become like an Olympian or like some IFBB model while doing my doctorate and running a business. Okay. I surrender. Let that let that energy go. Let the frustration go. I may not have the time right now to be the best boyfriend to be the best business owner and be the best student that I want. Okay. I surrender that the results are not going to be as good as I hope they could be.  I'm just going to surrender it. I'm just going to let it go. And so what happens is when you move out of this place of constantly rushing, constantly pushing, the first thing is that you just feel a lot better on a daily basis. You don't have to be anywhere. You don't have to be in a rush. You're just this is what I have to do.  I'm going to purge as much for my schedule as possible to feel good. But ultimately what I'm going to do is just release the reins and let things go a little bit more smoothly. So try that out. Let me know how it works for you. I've included that free goal setting worksheet right in the description box. It's the very first link. So click that, check it out. You can get my last two videos right here and right there.