13th Century Hygiene kit, a work in progress
If we look at persona work, or building out a kit, it is nice to know it doesn’t come fully formed in most cases and is a journey. I realized in early 2026, that I had most of the pieces for a 13th century hygiene kit, but that it was still a work in progress. We’ll go over the bits and pieces, what is correct, what is period but wrong time, and what is modern still to replace.
An important note, I have not done deep research on some of the hygiene practices. There are experts out there that have much better research. Some of these things can be dangerous to your health, so seek out the experts.
The Kit Today
The earspoon, tweezers, fingernail cleaner is silver and needs polishing. This was made for me for the 1st Griffen’s Needle and was researched to be appropriate for the 13th C. I need to locate that in my files.
The pitcher is based on a period artifact but is 15th C not 13th C and needs to be upgraded. This one is French 13 C from the Met, there are other examples.
The little silver mirror is totally modern. Probably close to the correct size, although I just started looking at that. The Louve apparently has one titled “Assault on the Castle of Love” which I need to check out, although that may be 14th C. Mirrors become more prevalent in the 14th C and beyond. The glass makers in Venice were just starting to coat glass with metal. They were also concave from what I’ve seen so far. The Islamic world was working with highly polished metal. The Met has some. One they thought might be cast bronze. This would have been a high-status item.
Assault on the castle of love on the left, and Bronze, cast. early 13th century. The Madina Collection of Islamic Art, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost on the right.
The glass bottle is for my soapwort shampoo. The bottle is modern and needs to be replaced with something 13th C appropriate, glass or ceramic. I’d like glass, I think that ceramic might be more correct. More research to do. Soapwort is one of the herbs that can be grown and harvested. It has saponins in the roots and stems and can be turned into a gentle soap or shampoo. Soapwort has been used to clean older textiles and rugs in some museums.
The soap is probably wrong, although it is close. I didn’t make it, but the ingredients are lard, lye, coconut oil, olive oil, water, oatmeal. 100% olive oil is expensive, so coconut seems to be the replacement filler today. Soap can be made with fat and alkaline. Lard and lye would work, as would a vegetable oil like olive oil. Pliny talks about a soap from tallow and ashes. Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi gave a recipe for producing glycerine from olive oil. By the 13th C, soap making had become a major industry, with both Aleppo and Castile producing soap at scale.
I’ve been working from the Trotula and Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, which are early to mid 12th C respectively. There is a tooth powder that is sage and salt (Trotula) that I recreated. The translation mentioned using sage and salt and forming them into balls and baking until “burnt” and then crushing them into powder. The sage is from my garden, I used a modern dehydrator to dry it, and put the salt and sage into a grinder. It did turn to powder. A test shows that it is abrasive, but not horribly so. There was also a reference to keeping a cloth at the table to wipe debris out of your teeth (I need to chase down where I read that, but think it was later than 13th C).
The laver and basin were purchased. I picked up the laver at Gulf Wars. I later contacted the creator to see if they would make me a matching basin. This can be suspended and used for simple hand washing, hair washing, etc.
Double sided comb, to help with cleaning the hair as well as dressing it for the day. A hand-sewn linen wash rag, sponge, and pumice stone finish out the current kit. I do need to confirm some information on the sponge, when and where that was available. From what I read, a loofah would have been available well past the 13th C in Southern France, but was available in Egypt earlier.