Sip of Seduction

[essentialsaltes]

aaronjv & hagdirt were nice enough to get us the book Absinthe: Sip of Seduction.

It provides a fairly complete view of many different aspects of the green fairy, ranging from bios of the rich & famous who tippled it, to its manufacture, the advertising art, the accompanying paraphernalia (like uranium glass), and a listing of commercially available absinthes. I wish, however, that I could find a particular piece of art online, because it's pretty neat. It depicts Revelation 8:10-11 - "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
So there is a big happy star falling to earth. Beside it are some Artemisia absinthium bushes, illustrated with enough care that they clearly resemble what we got in the back yard. And people are lying about drinking cups of poisoned water and dying. Lovely stuff. It's said to be from a British illuminated manuscript from ca. 1270.
Argh, further sleuthing suggests to me that it is probably from the Douce Apocalypse (MS Douce 180 at the Bod in Oxford). But I don't see that particular image online anywhere. Ah, well.
incidentally, in 1922 the Oxford University Press published a book on the manuscript, penned by one Montague Rhodes James.