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The Artist Explorer was generously funded by Foyle Foundation.

Jan van Eyck discovers the secret of oils

Much of the early history of oil painting is about what did not happen in our isolated country. The Renaissance that transformed and humanised painting in Italy in the 1500s did not really happen for us. Science, music and, especially literature, flourished in Britain, but the sensual world of paint remained unexplored.

It was left to the intrepid Dutch to show us the way. And, when they did, it was as much through chemistry as through artistry. They showed the Italians, too. The back and forth of ideas and techniques between Italy and Holland throughout the 15th Century was complex. However, painting in oils was originally a Dutch breakthrough, led by Jan van Eyck. He painted The Arnolfini Marriage in 1434 and was a pioneer in the alchemy of paint, as well as one of the first artists to sign their work.

In earlier times, artists were limited to water-based paints that dried too quickly. If they were working large on a wall, they couldn't stop for a break and they had to work bit by bit. If they were working on wood, the colour was flat and lifeless.

Until van Eyck's time, such oils as there were dried too slowly, if at all, and were murky and yellow. Van Eyck mixed raw pigment powder with organic oils, boiling calcined bones in linseed oil of the flax plant. This was a breakthrough because it finally perfected a stable mixture that 'dried' in a useful time. (Actually, strictly speaking, oil paint does not dry, or evaporate, like watercolour, rather it oxidises and 'sets').

The magic of the new medium

Once this formula had been achieved, a painter could, for the first time, wake up in the morning and build on what he had accomplished the day before. And what a vast array of new effects were now available to him! A whole new library of colour, texture, light and space.

Oil releases the properties of the colours and makes them transparent or opaque at will, so they can then be mixed or overlaid in limitless combinations. The human eye is capable of differentiating between tens of millions of colours, but until The Arnolfini Marriage no painter had ever been able to exploit this amazing ability. This rich new paint quality must have seemed at the time like "reality held in a glass paperweight".

Other artists develop the formula

Van Eyck kept his formula secret until just before he died. Next, Antonello da Messina added lead oxide to improve the consistency and drying time, and he is credited with having introduced the new process to Renaissance Italy. A little later that century Leonardo da Vinci improved the clarity by adding beeswax at lower temperatures, and later still Rubens used turpentine spirit as a thinner.

The more oil in the paint the 'fatter' it is and the longer it takes to dry. The more turps, the 'leaner' it is said to be, and it dries quicker. Painters knew they should paint fat over lean, or they risked cracking, with undried paint trapped under dried paint.

New techniques, new ideas

The new techniques coincided with new ideas in Italy. By the 1500s brilliant pageants of Saints, ordered, static and bejewelled, had given way to Man, naked and alone in huge landscapes, or men contending with one another in powerful dramas.

Perspective - that astonishing trick of 3D recession into mathematically projected space - was introduced.

The new possibilities of form and colour, embodied in Michelangelo the designer and Titian the colourist, echoed down through the ages through similar comparisons between Ingres and Delacroix, then Picasso and Matisse.

Early oils in Northern Europe

Meanwhile, in the colder, Protestant North, Man was depicted clothed and surrounded by his fellows. Although he had been released from being cooped up indoors, it was sometimes into a threatening and difficult environment.

In Pieter Brueghel's Dark Day, there is no story told, and yet the scene, a hard existence in a vast landscape in February, is exactly described. It is an early instance of landscape for its own sake, where mood overcomes narrative, not to be seen in English art until the 18th Century.

Van Dyck brings oils to England

It is through Rubens and his famous pupil van Dyck, both Dutchmen, that at last new ideas from Italy were introduced to England, and it was done with portraiture. The Royal court needed likenesses for, as Elizabeth I had discovered, portraits were the best propaganda.

In the wider context of European art van Dyck contributed little that was new - but his influence in England from the 1630s was profound. Not since Holbein in the 1530s had we seen so radical a painter. As the critic Richard Dorment has put it: "By introducing into British art both the spatial dynamism of the high baroque and the Venetian technique of scumbling (laying a thin layer of colour over another to create the effect of light playing over surface), van Dyck instantly became the most progressive artist in the country".

Van Dyck had many followers. Sir Peter Lely (Dutch) and Sir Godfrey Kneller (German) worked in his shadow until the 1730s when Hogarth (English!) could be said to have initiated a uniquely English school. He treated modern life through narrative, with humour and sympathy and, of course, great skill.

Reynolds and Gainsborough

The way was paved for two English artists, one from the west country - Sir Joshua Reynolds - and one from Suffolk in the east - Thomas Gainsborough. Both relied as ever on painting portraits, but the popular and versatile Reynolds believed in a 'Grand Style', idealising nature and flattering his sitters.

Gainsborough painted from nature in a peculiar, innovative, and anti-academic way. He loved the English landscape, which he painted in fluent, transparent and animated tones.

Now prose and poetry had set up shop opposite one another in British painting.

Constable

Firmly in the camp of the poets was the Romantic painter John Constable, also from Suffolk, who painted out of doors directly from nature, in all weathers. His vibrant and spontaneous oil sketches were admired by Delacroix and Gericault, and by the Barbizon school of plein-airistes.

The freedom for artists to roam about catching effects of light in all weathers, rather than having to mix their paints in their studios, was considerably furthered by the invention of the zinc paint tube in 1841, four years after Constable's death.

The Pre-Raphaelites

In the revolutionary year of 1848, a group of very young artists calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelites were rebelling against the brown and boring pictures at the Royal Academy. They wanted to get back to a purer time, before Raphael, when colours were vivid and subjects unsophisticated. To this end they painted medieval scenes on a white ground, which reflected light back through the pigment and intensified their colours to a degree initially shocking to the Victorian public.

Turner and the new British 'mainstream'

The Pre-Raphaelites might have remained outside the mainstream were it not for the championship of the influential critic John Ruskin, author of Modern Painters.

Ruskin analysed and eulogised J.M.W. Turner, whom he believed to be the greatest artist since the Renaissance. This helped to establish 'the mainstream', a fully mature British school of painting, with Turner at its head.

Turner, Ruskin argued, instead of 'composing' artificial paintings in his studio, went directly to nature to find truth, and God - 'the sublime', amidst which Man is very small indeed.

British art on the international stage

Turner died in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, which helped to establish British art and industry as pre-eminent in the world. Many new ideas were flourishing in the newly wealthy and increasingly confident Britain, amongst them those of the Aesthetic movement. Burne-Jones and Albert Moore painted unearthly subjects, pale ghosts in dreamscapes or impossible colour-coordinated beauties draped about. An art-hungry middle class goggled at them at the Grosvenor Gallery from 1877, and the New Gallery from 1888.

With railways and the telegraph, Britain became more permeable to foreign ideas. Frederic, Lord Leighton of Stretton, President of the Royal Academy, was a cosmopolitan who had studied in Germany, France and Italy. He owned several pictures by Corot.

The American influence

Some of the new ideas of the late 19th Century arrived with Americans. In 1875 Whistler painted his Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, reaching to the very edge of abstraction. Whistler wanted his painting to have the same effect on the emotions as a passage of music, and only reluctantly added 'Falling Rocket' to the title to explain the picture to the public. Whistler boasted that it took two days to paint, and it sparked a famous libel case after Ruskin accused the artist of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

Another cosmopolitan American, John Singer Sargent, painted in London as well as in New York, following the tradition of Velasquez and van Dyck. He was very successful. The critic Robert Hughes has praised Sargent as "the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty in a day that, like ours, paid excessive court to both."

The Impressionist influence

Whistler was a founder member of the New English Art Club in 1886, which was set up in emulation of the Salon des Refusés of the French Impressionists. Painters were required to work very fast, to catch the light before it changed. Represented in the first exhibition were George Clausen, Stanhope Forbes, Sargent and Wilson Steer.

Simultaneously, some of these same young artists colonized the fishing village of Newlyn, painting the light in the manner of La Thangue.

In Scotland the Glasgow Boys responded to Impressionist influence with broad brushes and vivid palettes.

Post-Impressionism

In 1910 and 1912 the critic, Roger Fry, organised exhibitions of Post-Impressionism (a term which he coined) in London. They were received with shock and horror. Fry was intimately involved with the Bloomsbury Group. They firmly rejected the traditional English aesthetics of narrative and the 'picturesque'. This did not prevent some of them, particularly Vanessa Bell and Dora Carrington, painting beautiful pictures.

At the same time, also influenced by the Post-Impressionists, particularly van Gogh and Gauguin, the Camden Town Group formed around Walter Sickert, who had known Degas. Their evocative paintings of London in the Great War were in a drab, dun palette that now seems exactly appropriate.

The Vorticists

Wyndham Lewis split from Fry and the Bloomsbury Group, and formed the Vorticist movement with Epstein, Bomberg, Gaudier-Breska, Nevinson, Wadsworth and Roberts. Excited by the dynamism and action of machines and men, the Vorticists positively embraced modernity, striving to capture movement in an image. Although Vorticism lasted a mere three years, it is now considered to be the only entirely home-grown and truly modernist British art movement of the 20th Century.

War-Time

The upheaval of the Great War fragmented all groupings, but the inhumanity of it provided powerful stimuli to modernist painters. The vulnerability of man amidst the remorseless engines and obliterating explosives of war demanded a new grammar. Horror inspired the Official War Artists to paint intensely powerful pictures. Amongst these 'painters in khaki' were Bomberg, Nevinson, Orpen, and Paul Nash.

Nash wrote from the front in 1917: "I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls."

Post-War British art

British painting after the Great War is notable again for what did not touch it. Britain was exhausted. Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field, Minimalism and forms of Post-Modernism never took much of a hold here, although of course individual painters, notably Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, achieved greatness on the world stage.

Some artists, like Stanley Spencer in Cookham, evolved slowly like pot-bound geraniums in isolated greenhouses, free of any formal influence.

The most radical developments in Britain at this time were with form and surface, and the protagonists, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, were both sculptors.

Hepworth's husband, the painter Ben Nicholson, experimented with overlaid geometric panels, textured with marble dust and thinly painted, sometimes in pure white. Hepworth and Nicholson went to live in St Ives in Cornwall, attracting a group of artists that became known as the St Ives School, including Lanyon and Frost, Hilton and Heron. Rich sensuous colour and bold, flat interlocking shapes are typical of all the St Ives painters.

In 1961 in the wake of Pop Art, a brash group of Royal College of Art students including Hockney, Caulfield and Kitaj made a big splash with an exhibition of very large and boldly coloured canvases.

The Euston Road School

Between the 1930s and the present day, Modernism in Britain evolved into a strange, wild, art market animal. However, alongside this story, and in stark contrast with it, another group of idealistic artists, many of them socialists, established itself just before the Second World War. They called themselves the Euston Road School.

These artists retreated from the tsunami of modern-isms emanating from America and retrenched to nature and reality. Bewildered and alienated by the intellectualisation of art, they wanted painting to be understood by the common man once again. Their quiet and moderate response was perhaps peculiarly British.

The Euston Road School provided us with a generation of great teachers, amongst them Coldstream, Gowing, and Pasmore, although Pasmore moved towards abstraction in about 1950.

The YBAs

It is out of this rich tradition that the Young British Artists - the YBAs - sprung from art schools to take the loud lead in contemporary art, worldwide.

© Rupert Maas 2009

Picture credits

Top to bottom:

Pieter Bruegel, Gloomy Day, © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (www.khm.at).

Peter Paul Rubens, The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier, © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (www.khm.at).

Anthonis van Dyck, The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph, © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (www.khm.at).

The Hervey Conversation Piece by William Hogarth (1697-1764), Ickworth The Bristol Collection (The National Trust) © NTPL/John Hammond.

Portrait of Sir Abraham Hume by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by The National Trust in 1984), © NTPL/John Hammond.

Rocky Wooded Landscape with Rustic Lovers by a Pool by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88). Apparently the picture was so much admired by Constable when he stayed at Petworth in 1834. North Gallery (Dec 1992), Petworth Housem The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by H.M.Treasury in 1957 and subsequently transferred to The National Trust), ©NTPL/Derrick E. Witty.

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, 18 June 1817 by John Constable. Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust) © NTPL/John Hammond.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent, Smallhythe, (The National Trust), © NTPL/Derrick E. Witty.

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The Artist Explorer was generously funded by Foyle Foundation. Jan van Eyck discovers the secret of oils Much of the early history of oil painting is about what did not happen in our isolated country. The Renaissance that transformed and humanised painting in Italy in the 1500s did not really happen for us.

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Jam seems like a simple sweet treat to spread on toast, but the truth is there is a science behind perfecting the process of making this conserve. The pectins, sugar, and acids that are vital to jam all play important roles in creating the perfect flavor and consistency. Here, we take a brief look at how jam entered our pantries and how it is best made, according to science.

Image Credit: 5 second Studio/Shutterstock.com

A brief history of jam

Modern jam emerged as recently as the 19th century. Before this, the key ingredient of sugar had been too expensive and reserved only to make treats for the rich. For those who could afford it, preserves made from sugar were offered out on silver spoons to follow up a meal.

The first preserves made in Europe mixed honey with fruit pulp and left to dry in the sun. Quince was a fruit often used as it set the preserve well due to its high pectin content. In Greece, this preserve was known as melomeli and was thought to be an aphrodisiac. The British took this recipe and adapted it to incorporate pears, damsons, plums, and eventually Seville oranges to make marmalade. When sugar prices fell in the 17th-century marmalade became popular in Scotland. By the 1880s, jam had become popular among the working classes where it was being eaten on top of dark wholemeal bread.

Today, many factory-produced jams are considered to be more sickly than the traditional version. It seems that mass-produced products lean heavily on the sugar content but what, according to science, is the best way to make jam?

The perfect balance of pectins, sugar, and acids

Jam is made of three essential chemical entities: pectins, sugar, and acids. Pectins are long sugar molecules linked in chains that are vital to setting the jam. They occur naturally in the cell walls of plants, and, therefore, fruits provide a natural source of pectin

The process of boiling the jam releases the pectins contains in the fruit, and, with the addition of the correct amount of sugar and acids, the pectins bind to each other via intermolecular interactions to create a gel that is the basis of the jam's consistency. Once allowed to cool, the structure of the gel traps in the water, give the jam a jelly-like consistency.

Although pectin naturally occurs in fruit, the level of pectin is not uniform across different varieties. For example, apples and blackcurrants are high in pectin, whereas strawberries and raspberries contain lower amounts. To make a jam from a low pectin fruit it is often paired with a higher pectin fruit to allow it to set properly. In commercially made jams, citrus peel is often added to boost pectin levels in jams using low pectin fruit.

Sugar is needed in high quantities in jam. It is important for its flavor but also to help the jam set. While many recipes recommend using the same amount of sugar as jam, science says different. Sugar is required to enhance the gel-forming capability of the pectin. It draws water to itself and in doing so, it prevents the pectin from forming separate chains. The sugar also works to preserve the fruit in the jam by pulling the water to bind with it leaving too few water molecules to support microbial growth. The final sugar content should be slightly higher than that advised by most recipes, equating to up to two-thirds of the jam.

Acids are the final essential ingredient for making jam. Like pectins, these are also found naturally in fruit. Usually, COOH groups in pectin act to prevent the pectin chains from forming a gel network due to the negative charges of the molecules (ionization), which causes repulsion. By adjusting the pH of the mixture, making it slightly acidic (in the range of 2.8-3.3), the ionization of the COOH groups is prevented, which allows the pectin chains to form in networks.

While fruits contain sources of acid, such as citric acid, magic acid, and tartaric acid, it usually is not present at levels sufficient to prevent ionization of the COOH groups. Therefore, additional acidity is usually provided by adding another source of acid, usually lemon juice although other forms can also be used. The key to adding any acidic ingredient is to get the jam to the correct pH.

Image Credit: pilipphoto/Shutterstock.com

Perfecting the balance

Overall, to make the best jam it is important to get the right levels of the three key chemical components: pectins, sugar, and acid. Sugar should be more than half of the final jam product which should also be slightly acidic. Understanding the science behind jam making and achieving this perfect balance is key to making the best jam.

Sources:

Andy Connelly. (2013). The science and magic of jam-making. [Online]. Food.NDTV. Available at: food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/the-science-and-magic-of-jam-making-694284 Last accessed January 2022

Raphaelides, S., Ambatzidou, A. and Petridis, D., 1996. Sugar Composition Effects on Textural Parameters of Peach Jam. Journal of Food Science, 61(5), pp.942-946. ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1996.tb10907.x

Thakur, B., Singh, R., Handa, A. and Rao, M., 1997. Chemistry and uses of pectin - A review. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 37(1), pp.47-73. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408399709527767

Further Reading

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How to Make the Best Jam According to Science

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Jam seems like a simple sweet treat to spread on toast, but the truth is there is a science behind perfecting the process of making this conserve. The pectins, sugar, and acids that are vital to jam all play important roles in creating the perfect flavor and consistency.

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Next month, ice dancers, racers and hockey players will lace up their razor-sharp skates to compete in some of the most popular winter Olympic games. But for centuries, blades on boots weren't just for sports and leisure-they were the only way some people had to travel in winter. The ice skate dates back to the Bronze Age, when people throughout eastern Europe and Russia built skates out of animal shin bones that let them glide in vastly different ways than athletes do today.

In the 15th century Netherlands, the most common way to travel in cold months was by skates, says Federico Formenti, a physiologist and sports scientist at King's College London who has studied the evolution of ice skates. Networks of canals that the Dutch built to power water mills and irrigate farmland in the summer became frozen highways for thousands to travel by in winter. (Locals and visitors still take to the ice, though idyllic winter days of snow and ice are less frequent today.)

"They were as popular there as cars are in America today," Formenti says. "That was the stimulus to try new solutions to improve the skates, so people could travel more rapidly."

Ice skates' central role in the history of Dutch transportation might have something to do with the fact that the Dutch have more combined medals and gold medals in speed skating than any other country in the history of the Olympics.

No matter their design, all skates work by the same common principle: as the blade travels over ice, it melts a thin layer of water that allows the skater to glide. The speed and function of a skate, however, depends on the shape and size of the blade and boot. Blade thickness and boot sturdiness impact speed. And a long blade makes for a generally faster skate, Formenti says.

"Having a long blade means that your weight is distributed over a wider area," he explains. "The blade does not sink as much into the ice so you can glide more easily because there is less friction."

Since the 15th century, however, skates have gained new baubles, innovations and overall designs meant to improve more than speed. Figure skaters now sport toe picks to help them spin, while hockey players have double-edged blades for sharper stops. But all of today's iterations stem from a common source dating back at least 3,000 years, when people first built skates out of animals bones to ease winter travel.

These skates were quite different than today's skates. Whereas modern skates have narrow blades and travel only forward and backward, bone skates lie flat and can glide in all directions.

Formenti wanted to understand how the human energy required to ice skate has changed through time, so in 2006, he conducted an experiment in which he had five ex-professional short track speed skaters test out four different historical skates and one modern model. The skate styles he tested ranged from replicas of Bronze Age bone skates to modern steel skates. He sourced models from the 13th, 15th and 18th centuries to represent the gradual evolution through time, using a replica for the 13th century model and museum specimens for the two others.

His results showed the dramatic effect that the 13th century introduction of the metal blade had on skate dynamics. The metal blade-made from iron embedded in wood-nearly doubled the speed of skates, from about 2.5 miles per hour to 4 miles per hour. The introduction of sturdier bindings in the 15th century helped increase the speed again, to about 6 miles per hour.

Today, skaters can reach speeds four times faster than on the original bone skates, with a world record of 36.80 miles per hour set by the Russian Pavel Kulizhinkov in the 2015 World Cup.

Why did metal make such a difference? "The metal blade allows control of the skate, and then you increase that control by having the skate tightly bound to your feet," says Formenti. He explains that increased control allows for longer strides: "Your feet need to be stable on the blade rather than wobbling around, which was the case with older skates."

But some skate innovations have gone so far as to no longer benefit the skater. Modern bindings on skates allow for more stability, more forceful strides and theoretically fewer ankle twists. But James Richards, a sports biomechanics researcher at the University of Delaware, says that the stiffness of the modern figure skating boot restrains movement so much so that it can actually cause injury when a skater lands from a jump.

"There is stability in all directions and that's probably not the right way to go," Richards says. "In essence, what they have done is built a cast."

Ankle sprains and overuse injuries like stress fractures and lower back pain are common amongst figure skaters as a result of the boot's restrictiveness, Richards says. He cites a 2003 study that showed that nearly half of a group of 469 elite junior skaters experienced overuse injuries in competition.

Hockey and speed skates, on the other hand, have evolved more rapidly in recent years. Hockey skates have gained mobility in the ankle, and speed skating clap skates with hinged boots allow racers to keep their blades on the ice for longer periods of time and reach higher accelerations. "Hockey skates and speed skates are much more sophisticated than the current figure skate," Richards says. The market for hockey skates is bigger than that of figure skates, he explains, and these sports aren't as entrenched in tradition as figure skating.

Even given these innovations, it's humbling to remember that our ancestors have been hustling around on ice for at least 3,000 years. Bone skates-generally made from the shin bones of cattle and horses-have been found throughout particularly flat and wet regions of Hungary, Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere. They were cheap and easy to make, and would have been accessible to the average person, says Hans Christian Küchelmann, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

"Making bone skates is not an elaborate task," says Küchelmann. He should know: He once made a pair himself in an effort to understand the Bronze Age experience. First he had to source the bone, by contacting the director of the Sofia Zoo in Bulgaria, who offered him horse remains from the lions' den. He then defleshed and cleaned these bones, used a modern drill to make holes in the front and back, and attached leather straps that secured the bones to his boots.

Finally, he gave them a try. His verdict: "It was quite interesting and challenging."

Whereas modern skates with blades travel only forward and backward, bone skates lie flat and can glide in all directions. "In the modern day skates, you have this blade and you make a kind of scissor-like movement and you push yourself, you propel yourself by pushing your leg to the side," says Küchelmann. "But you can't do that with the bone skates."

It's hard to know whether people in the Bronze Age used these early skates for anything more than just travel, since written records don't exist from that time. But records and paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries showing adults and kids scurrying on the ice suggest that leisure has long been at least one component of skating.

Today, when the ice forms thick enough to skate on in the Netherlands, it's cause for celebration. "Immediately you have the whole city on the ice," Küchelmann says. "You could meet the mayor on ice skates, families, older people, punk rockers, whatever. People sell hot wine and sausages on the ice. It's like a fair."

Yet while ice skating culture lives on, the design evolution of at least some skates may be at a standstill. For his part, Richards doesn't think the figure skate will change much any time soon, since so little has changed in its design over the last century. "A lot of why [the skaters] are in what they are in is tradition," says Richards. "There is very little incentive to go out there and put major resources into a major reengineer of the skate."

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The First Ice Skates Weren't for Jumps and Twirls-They Were for Getting Around

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Next month, ice dancers, racers and hockey players will lace up their razor-sharp skates to compete in some of the most popular winter Olympic games. But for centuries, blades on boots weren't just for sports and leisure-they were the only way some people had to travel in winter.

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How to improve your flexibility, according to physiotherapists

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Discover how to improve your flexibility, protect your joints and level up your fitness with our expert-led guide

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Rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa with over 300 species and thousands of cultivars. The scientific name of the rose is Rosa. The rose flowers are usually large and showy and come in a variety of colours ranging from white, yellow, pink, orange, peach to lavender. Most species of roses are native to Asia while some of them are native to Europe, North America, and northwestern Africa.

Roses are undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and popular flowers around the world. For centuries, roses have been the symbol of love, beauty, and passion. They are known to have a long and fascinating history with fossil evidence of 35 million years old, much before the humans came into existence.
Here are some amazing facts related to the ancient, medieval, and modern history of roses:

The garden cultivation of roses began some 5000 years ago in China. The rose fossils have also been discovered in Yugoslavia & Germany.

During the Roman period, roses were grown extensively in the Middle East and used as confetti at celebrations, as a source of perfume, and for medicinal purposes.

During the fifteenth century, the rose was used as a symbol for the factions fighting to control England. The red rose symbolized Lancaster and the white rose symbolized York. As a result, the conflict became known as the "War of the Roses. "

During the seventeenth century, royalty considered roses or rose water legal tender as they were used as barter and for payments.

In the late eighteenth century, the cultivated roses were introduced into Europe from China. Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this ancestry.

Rosa gallica also called the French rose is identified as the oldest rose that exists to this day. It was regarded as a symbol of love by the Persians.

Rosa damascena or the damask rose is an offspring of Rosa gallica that first appeared in 900 B.C. and has been an integral part of the history of roses.

Rosa alba is another important rose variety, which is also called the "White Rose of York." In the 15th century, during the war of the roses, the House of York made this rose its emblem.

The ancient Romans, Greeks, and Phoenicians not only cultivated roses but also used them for trade. These communities acquired different varieties of roses while they travelled and conquered different places. Therefore, the roses spread extensively through the Middle East & other places in the region of the Mediterranean.

Due to the fall of the Roman Empire, the Europeans were busy struggling to recover from the war and it became very difficult to maintain rose gardens.

The King of Franks Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great (742 A.D. -814 A.D.) grew roses on the grounds of his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle.

During the 12th & 13th centuries, soldiers who returned from the crusades in the Middle East carried with them the stories of ostentatious rose gardens and also some sample flowers.

The herbalists also provided evidence of their increasing knowledge regarding roses. In 1597, the English herbalist John Gerard mentioned in his book 'Herball' that people at that time were aware of 14 types of roses. In 1629, John Parkinson noted that as many as 24 different types of roses were grown in his herbal garden called Paradisus. By the 1700s, the artist, Mary Lawrance illustrated 90 different varieties of roses in her book titled, "A Collection of Roses from Nature."

The first hybrid tea rose, "La France" was introduced by the French breeder, Guillot in 1867.

The hybrid tea rose possessed the general habit of a hybrid perpetual rose that had elegantly shaped buds and free following character of a tea rose.

By the late 20th century, more than 10,000 hybrid tea roses were bred successfully.

The introduction of 'La France' announced the era of modern roses.

Currently, there are believed to be around 30,000 varieties of roses worldwide. Each year, the number of gardens where the old roses appear also increases.

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Rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa with over 300 species and thousands of cultivars. The scientific name of the rose is Rosa. The rose flowers are usually large and showy and come in a variety of colours ranging from white, yellow, pink, orange, peach to lavender.

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Pizza represents more than just a food product. Recent history reveals that pizza fosters a feeling of togetherness, along with great joy, ingenuity, and creative expression. Tom Santos, field sales rep at General Mills Foodservice, points out the pizza effect: "The pandemic has really demonstrated the power of pizza. When people couldn't go out, they could still count on getting pizza delivered or getting pizza for takeout. From its portability to the ease and accessibility of getting it, pizza is probably more popular than ever."

Santos has more than two decades of experience as a bakery owner plus more than 20 years of sales field experience at General Mills, giving him a unique perspective to help solve customer's challenges with flour and dough. And Chef Tim Trainor is a member of the Chefs of the Mills-specialized culinary professionals at General Mills Foodservice who immerse themselves in the industries they serve-offering training, ideas and inspiration to help operations succeed.

"The pandemic hasn't impacted the pizza category as much as other types of restaurants because pizzerias already had a good model in place," Trainor shares. "Whether it was takeout or delivery, pizza is so convenient and accessible to so many, and consumers know what to expect from their favorite pizza place. Pizza restaurants were able to keep up with demand and meet expectations for consistency, taste, and convenience throughout the last 18 months. Chains elevated their game by completing the experience by feeding the family and making it about the total meal offering through dessert, sides, and beverages. All of this has helped fuel even greater demand for pizza!"

Great pizza comes in many forms. But there is a unifying factor to this product, overall.

Paul Bright, senior innovation manager for AB Mauri North America, points out that to make a great pizza, it is quite simple: consistency.

"Once pizza makers determine the formulation and process to produce their version of a great pie, the next step is to ensure that the process is followed the same way every time," Bright says. "Any changes to ingredients - like flour - or to process times and temperatures can increase the chances of inconsistently baked pizzas on a week in and week out basis."

So, the question looms: For pizza makers, what steps are the foundation of making great pizza?

Consistency in process is the key. Dough is a living product, at least until 140 degrees when the yeast dies during the baking process. Time and temperature standards must be in place and adhered to when mixing, processing, and storing dough for later use. Fermentation equals flavor and shortcuts taken during the processing will simply produce substandard pizza crusts," points out Dave Krishock, bakery technical support manager for Grain Craft.

Pandemic recovery

Nick Saviano III, owner of The Pizza Factory of Barrington, Ill., has been in the pizza business for 44 years. Dino Taccogna, La Crosta Woodfire Pizzeria Italiana, Chicago, is newer to the scene, just celebrating his five-year anniversary. Both are passionate about Chicago's pizza tradition.

The pandemic hit the restaurant industry hard. How did La Crosta and The Pizza Factory respond?
"The first two weeks were very challenging," Saviano explains. "We shut down our lunch business and used the extra time to focus on our menu. We started prepping earlier in the day so we would be ready for our dinner service. Thankfully, the downturn in business didn't last very long. We got very busy and hired more delivery drivers. We implemented free contactless delivery and expanded our delivery zone."

For Taccogna, he says they were positioned at a fortunate place. "We were lucky that our core menu and business was already set up for pickup and delivery. When we had to reduce dining room capacity, we got creative and opened our large storefront windows to bring the outside in with increased air flow."

What has been the biggest change to the menu?
"We used this as an opportunity to reset to our menu," Saviano says. "We took a hard look at our menu and what people wanted. We cut the items that didn't sell as well. Normally we would have taken a long time to make these decisions, but the pandemic forced us to change quickly. The pandemic gave us the opportunity to try new things and see what people liked. We dropped some of our fast-food items-hot dogs and polish sausage-and started offering housemade appetizers, soups and Italian beef."

Of course, Chicago-style thin crust is still the hero. The new menu helped them save money, reduce labor, reduce waste, and focus on the core pizza and other hero items.

For Taccogna, consistency was the goal.

"We were fortunate in that we didn't have to make any menu changes. We've been able to purchase the same quality ingredients from our trusted suppliers throughout the pandemic, and our customers appreciate the continuity of the menu. Our most popular pizzas are the Margarita, Due Carne, and Chili Burrata & Prosciutto," he says.

Fruit flavor inspirations

The summer months are bringing creative inspiration to the pizza menus of America's favorite places. Your Pie, a fast-growing, fast-casual pizza franchise, announced its latest Craft Series menu selection, which features fresh peaches on several of its summertime entrees.

Your Pie's new Summer Peach Craft Series menu is headlined by a limited time offer of the award-winning Peach & Prosciutto Pie. The pizza features ricotta, prosciutto, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, fresh peaches and a honey-balsamic glaze. It was originally created by Your Pie founder Drew French as a tribute to the brand's Italian influences and Georgia roots.

French earned a spot on the United States Pizza Team with the signature pie in 2016 and competed at the 2016 World Pizza Championship in Parma, Italy. The pie was named one of America's Most Innovative Menu Items in 2017.

The Craft Series has been a seasonal feature of the Your Pie menu since the brand's inception in 2008. The Summer Peach Craft Series offerings launches on Tuesday, June 1. It will be available for a limited time only at Your Pie restaurants across the country through the peach season harvest ending in early August.

Peach & Prosciutto Pie - This hand-tossed 10-inch pizza features a base of olive oil and ricotta topped with prosciutto and a blend of mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. Fresh peaches are added before being baked in Your Pie's signature brick oven. A pinch of fresh basil and house-made honey balsamic glaze is then drizzled over the pizza. The Peach Prosciutto Pizza ranges from $8.99 to $10.99.

Peaches and Cream Sticks - The dessert entrée is a dough base topped with ricotta, peach slices, pecans, and served with a topping of vanilla gelato. Peaches and Cream Sticks ranges from $1.99 to $4.99.

"The Peach & Prosciutto Pie is a staple of our summer menu and one of our customers' favorite and most anticipated pizzas of the year," said Lisa Dimson, chief marketing officer of Your Pie. "We have also added several other delicious offerings featuring peaches, which gives these items a sweet summertime flavor."

Growth potential

Todd Hale, who is principal, Todd Hale, LLC, urges pizza shop owners and baking leaders to focus on in-store and ecommerce strategies, and invest in digital and traditional marketing platforms. He also emphasized the need to be aware of inflationary pressures that could impact sales.

The industry should build on strategies that support home-based consumption, he added.

"How are you investing to keep at-home demand high?" he asked.

Of note, Jeremy White, content director and editor-in-chief for Pizza Today, Pizza Expo, and the Artisan Bakery Expo, points out that consumers are moving to app-based ordering.

"They want to push a couple of buttons and then have their food arrive. The old ways of doing business are dying," he says.

What about convenience - how is this influencing how pizza is made, and the types of pizzas that are most popular?

"Pizza is one of the most convenient foods on the planet. It's readily available, relatively inexpensive and travels well," White says. "That's why it has always been and will forever remain the ultimate group food!"

The serious pizza maker looks to control as many of those variables as possible by watching water temperature, dough temps during mixing, etc., he adds.

"Americans are really expanding their palates, which is a beautiful thing," White explains. "High-end cured meats, such as spicy soppressata and speck, have been trending for many years now and continue to have growing appeal. An opened pizza dough is literally a blank canvas, and today's pizza makers are experimenting like never before."

Job training

The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation and restaurant company MOD Super Fast Pizza Holdings LLC, parent of the fast-casual MOD Pizza chain, recently partnered to create job opportunities and skills training for young adults to help them start careers that can change their life paths.

The initiative, called the HOPES Program-Hospitality Opportunities for People (Re)Entering Society-allows businesses, state restaurant associations and community-based organizations, to work together to create successful career paths for justice-involved young adults ages 18 to 24 who are re-entering society.

The Foundation and MOD Pizza are launching the partnership this month at the chain's Chicago locations with plans to roll it out nationally later this year.

"MOD Pizza has set the standard for how restaurants can meaningfully and successfully work with justice-involved youth," says Susan Crystal-Mansour, the Foundation's vice president of program impact. "We are honored to have MOD as the inaugural partner in our life-changing HOPES program. We believe this partnership can be the gold standard for the rest of the industry. It will allow us to create pathways to long-term success for dedicated employees often overlooked by society."

"Over the years, we've seen first-hand the incredible opportunity that exists for companies to make an impact by providing jobs for individuals with barriers to employment," says Ally Svenson, MOD Pizza's co-founder and chief purpose officer. "Through this collaboration, we can provide critical resources to help squad members on their journeys to stability and economic mobility. We're grateful to the Foundation for choosing MOD as its first national restaurant partner."

With its holistic approach, the HOPES program seeks to reduce recidivism by helping participants focus on securing supportive job placement and creating opportunities for career advancement.

MOD currently employs more than 8,300 employees and offers industry-leading benefits, mentorship and training opportunities, plus access to the "Bridge Fund," which provides financial support for squad members in need. To date, the company has distributed more than $1.5 million in grants to help employees in crisis.

Cause marketing

The Venetian Resort and Grand Canal Shoppes joined Three Square Food Bank in the fight against hunger during the 14th installment of Las Vegas Restaurant Week, June 7-18.

The event marked an opportunity to sample the resort's award-winning restaurant collection from celebrity chefs including Thomas Keller's Bouchon, David Chang's Majordōmo Meat & Fish, Lorena Garcia's CHICA, newcomers BRERA osteria and estiatorio Milos by Costas Spiliadis, Matteo's Ristorante Italiano, Emeril Lagasse's Delmonico Steakhouse, and the first all-Vegan restaurant on the Strip, Truth and Tonic.

As part of the program, participating restaurants will feature prix fixe menus at a special price, a great way to try the resort's award-winning restaurants. This year, some participating restaurants will also offer take-out options and other specialty menus.

Truth & Tonic, the first fully vegan restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip, took part in Restaurant Week, featuring GOOD PLANeT Foods in all of its noteworthy breakfast and lunch menus. Now in its 14th year, Las Vegas Restaurant Week gives restaurants in the community the opportunity to give back through the culinary arts.

GOOD PLANeT, a leader within the plant-based cheese category, and known for superior melt, taste and texture, is a natural fit for Truth & Tonic's striking plant-based menu.

Truth & Tonic is the first of its kind on the Las Vegas strip, offering fully plant-based options with maximum flavor, so guests can indulge guilt-free. With a prominent place on Truth & Tonic's Restaurant Week menu, diners will have a unique opportunity to experience GOOD PLANeT on an acclaimed, nutrient-dense menu. Among the strides the brand has made on its upward trajectory, the brand's growing inclusion in foodservice demonstrates the overall growth GOOD PLANeT Foods is currently experiencing, alongside the rapid growth of the plant-based industry.

"My motivation to use a plant-based cheese at Truth & Tonic Wellness Cafe is to create a vegan menu that is irresistible to all diners. To do that, I needed to surround myself with great, delicious ingredients that people are familiar with, yet still can exceed their expectations," shared Pete Ghione, executive chef at Truth & Tonic. "Compared to the many other brands of cheese I've tried, GOOD PLANeT is the one that I found tastes the most like traditional cheese made with dairy. Both hot and cold, the textures are creamy and amazing. I'm always looking forward to expanding my menus as the GOOD PLANeT portfolio of deliciousness continues to expand."

Flavor inspirations

What happens when authentic flavors meet Pizza Royalty? Round Table's new Limited Time Only Street Taco Pizza! With bold flavors like charred corn, zesty chorizo, tomatoes, crema, crisp tortilla strips, green onions, Round Table's three-cheese blend, salsa roja sauce, and fresh lime wedges for added zest, it is a pizza like no other. Pair it with a refreshing Pacifico® Beer for a perfect pizza fiesta. Available now for dine-in, carryout and delivery.

Round Table Pizza has more than 410 restaurants across the United States.

"Our new Street Taco Pizza features everything Round Table is known for - our homemade dough, proprietary three cheese blend, generous hand cut toppings and unparalleled quality all with a fun twist," said Annica Conrad, chief marketing officer for Global Franchise Group, the parent company of Round Table Pizza. "Our culinary innovation team worked hard to blend authentic Latin American flavors with our famous pizza and they delivered. This is the best Limited Time Specialty Pizza in Round Table's great history - a statement almost as bold as our Street Taco Pizza!"

Pizza Night

Sun Street Breads in Minneapolis features an innovation promotional event that offers a template for how leading retail bakeries can promote and deliver great pizza.

Every Thursday night the popular bakery fires up the ovens and serve up delicious hand-tossed pizza baked at insanely hot temps.

"We have been extremely busy on Pizza Night, so we recommend people place your order during the day if possible," explains Solveig Tofte, owner of Sun Street Breads. "You can order by phone, or in-person. We also offer curbside delivery."

Information hub

Pizza Quest is a site dedicated to the exploration of artisanship in all forms, but especially through the literal and metaphorical image of pizza, explains Peter Reinhart, baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University.

"As we share our own quest for the perfect pizza we invite all of you to join us and share your journeys too," he says. "We have discovered that you never know what engaging roads and side paths will reveal themselves on this quest, but we do know that there are many kindred spirits out there, passionate artisans, doing all sorts of amazing things. These are the stories we want to discover, and we invite you to jump on the proverbial bus and join us on this, our never-ending pizza quest."

Reinhart is the author of ten books on bread baking and pizza, including Brother Juniper's Bread Book and the modern classic The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which was named cookbook of the year in 2002 by both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

In a recent podcast, Reinhart featured Will Grant, who began his career at ripe old age of eight, working the kitchen in his family's restaurant, That's A Some Pizza, on Bainbridge Island, Washington. By 10, he was apprenticing under several different chefs and, into his late teens, he had helped to open 5 restaurants.

As a young man, he decided to strike out on his own, leaving the family business for the east coast to gain experience running kitchens at major chains, like Red Robin, Bertucci's, and learning alongside some of the world's best chefs, like Wolfgang Puck.

He eventually returned to his Pacific Northwest roots and That's A Some Pizza, but this time as owner and head chef. Wanting to make the most of the restaurant's 120-year-old sourdough starter, he attended the International School of Pizza in San Francisco, training alongside his idol, Tony Gemignani.

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Pizza represents more than just a food product. Recent history reveals that pizza fosters a feeling of togetherness, along with great joy, ingenuity, and creative expression. Tom Santos, field sales rep at General Mills Foodservice, points out the pizza effect: "The pandemic has really demonstrated the power of pizza.

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How dance helps people connect despite isolation

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Creative dancers share genes with strong social communicators, suggesting that we evolved to overcome isolation.