Status (i.e. Statuts), ordonnances et reglements de la communaute des six Barbiers Baigneurs, Estuvistes & Perruquiers [...] d'Orleans [et] deux cens Barbiers [...] de Paris by [Law. France. Orleans & Paris, 19 Avril 1684. Barbers, Bathers, Wig-Makers] - 1684

S.l.: s.n., 1684. Softcover. Very good. n.d. (but ca. 1684). 4to. 8 pp. Large woodcut headpiece, 6-line woodcut initial. Stitched in modern wrappers. Some wear, dust-soiling, evidence of folding. Two tax stamps (one on title, the other on final leaf). Suitable for exhibition and study. Scarce and very early Royal statutes for the Guild of Barbers, Bath Men, and Wigmakers of Orleans, not found in CCFr, Worldcat, or KVK. Our copy features contemporary manuscript annotations which highlight the development of these regulations by date. Guild statutes awarded master Barbers and Wigmakers exclusive control over the hair industry. "The Guild was uniquely organized on the basis of a royal charge that wigmakers purchased prior to becoming guild masters. Non-masters who ran independent wigmaking enterprises committed a crime against the social order that was taken seriously by the state [...] Despite guild regulations to the contrary, illicit wigmakers, through their continuous presence, expanded their identities and, benefiting from bourgeois consumerism, contributed to historical changes in the hair industry" (Source: Mary Kathryn Gayne, "Illicit Wigmaking in Eighteenth-Century Paris" in: Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 38, No. 1, Fall, 2004).

Of particular interest are the ordinances concerning signage of barbershops, baths, and hair salons, and how each boutique must be differentiated from "Chirurgiens"; regulations for apprentises and apprentiships; authorized merchandise that can be sold (powders, opiates for tooth aches, ointments, soaps, makeup, and "all products related to health"). At the time of publication there were six Master barbers in the Orleans branch of the Guild, compared to 200 in Paris.

The present regulations appear to have been recorded by Hippolyte Blanc in his indispensable "Bibliographie des corporations ouvrières avant 1789" (Paris, 1885) no. 893 in which it is listed under the date of 19 Avril 1684.