What can you do as a french wig maker in the 18th century

Hello,

As I wrote before, I worked on the 18th century man hairstyle. Mostly the thigs I looked for were in french so I do not know how to translate it in English. Let's just says that, in french, the modern verb to give an hairstyle :''coiffer'' differs from the 18th century verb to give an hairstyle: ''Accomoder''. Since I do not want to do linguistic I will not go more deep in the distinction.

So '' Coiffeurs'' are the professionals who modernly in french does the haircut to everybody, the sources I went through look like they were exclusively for woman in the 18th century.

The question is: where would go a 18th century man to have an haircut if not to a ''coiffeur'' (hairdresser)? The answer is weird according to 21st century me: the ''perruquier'' (wig maker).




In fact, ''l'art du perruquier'' of Garsault, published in 1767, it informs about what I would call the rights of practice of the '' barbier-perruquier-baigneur-étuviste'' (Barber-wig maker-bath giver)

1. The wig maker have the right to buy and sell human hair in big or small quantities. That is easily to guess.
2. The wig maker have the right to make and sell powders and pomatums for head and face hygiene. But te author, Gasault, noted that most wig maker let that right to perfumers. 
3. The wig maker has the right to shave beard. He shared that right with the surgeon (commonly called ''barbier-chirurgien'', as I would translate as barder-surgeon). To help customers to distinguish one from the other, the law obligated the barber-surgeon to have his boutique face painted in black or red and to have on their poster some yellow copper basins. On the other hand, barber-wig maker can paint the front of his boutique every color he wants except from black or red and his poster has to show white basins. 
4. The wig maker can cut the hair. The verb in modern french (couper les cheveux)differs from the one used by the originals sources in french (faire les cheveux).
   
   
   
5. The wig maker have the right to make Wigs. What a surprise! The goal of the wig maker is to mimic the nature's beauty. You can see that nature can have very diverse forms...
   
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6. The wig maker can have baths in his shop. It seems that the few that decided to do that were not giving the others rights of the wig maker. I, his  ''Art du perruquier'' Garsault wrote: 

''les bains et étuves, autre appanage du perruquier, ont une origine bien différente des autres parties dont on vient de parler; car ils sont de toute antiquité, principalement dans les pays chauds où ils sont journaliers; dans le nôtre, on n'en use que de temps en temps, surtout en été; je ne parle que des bains de propreté: d'ailleurs les bains sont d'un grand secours en Médecine, alors ils se divisent en différentes espèces, demi-bain, bain froid, bain chaud, bain d'immersion, etc.''

So I will translate the important part I want to share. ''In hot countries, bath were taken every day. In our country (France), we use baths in time to time, especially in summer; and I'm just talking about cleaning bath... After he talks about the different bath used by medicine...'' It looks to me like a historical deposit against the myth of unclean ancestors. For me take a bath time to time is way more that the myth of one bath a year or less. But that point will be for another article.

I hope you would like this little translation to the world of french Wig Maker!

Mlle Canadienne