Talk:Lacrymatory

Merge with Unguentarium

I created the "Unguentarium" article, but I hope I'm not incorrect to say that it is more complete and more up-to-date in its references. Scholars only rarely use the term "lachrymatory" these days, for reasons explained in that article. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree — the content of this article should be merged into the "Unguentarium" article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Disagree - the two items are not the same thing. Lacrymatory were popular if only as symbolic items during Victorian times, often as part of the mourning jewelry custom, and have become popular again in Goth culture. I would prefer to see this article developed better, referenced and then linked to Unguentarium. In fact, I just caught an old repeat of a Tales from the Darkside eipsode called The Tear Collector where the use of Lacrymatory featured centrally to the plot. This article will never be a long one but it should remain a separate one. The more common spelling of the item as used in Victorian times and in Goth culture is Lachrymatory. The spelling difference may be one reason editors might find trouble getting proper references in online searches of books.LiPollis (talk) 09:56, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to the current content of the article. If it should be expanded, it may well deserve its own page.

"Lachrymatory" currently redirects to Lachrymatory agent, a fancy name for "tear gas", and all six links to it seem to mean the gas, not this "Lacrymatory". Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. My reference to the spelling refers to common usage, not wikipedia. If folks search google or other engines using the term Lachrymatory along with Victorian or mourning, they'll get a lot of interesting info. Tear collection bottles were common during the American Civil War period as well but of course, this overlaps with the Victorian Era. My first exposure to the Victorian version was in helping a friend clean and categorize a collection of Black glass Victorian Mourning Jewelry. In the collection were some Lachrymatory pins. I'd never seen the pins before, just the stand-alone bottles. There days, you can often find several styles of Lachrymatory in New Age shops. Some are designed to catch tears of joy over the birth of a child or a wedding and others are for mourning the loss of pets. You can often find them next to small glass bottles to display a ceremonial amount of pet's ashes. The cards I've seen with such products seem to suggest that this is a way for the pet owner to hang onto the memory after having scattered the ashes. I'll see what I can do in the next few weeks to beef up this article a bit just in terms of describing the more recent usages. The Unguentarium article covers ancient usage perfectly well and the whole point of this discussion about merging is to not repeat article info, right? ANy help others want to offer would be welcomed. My time is limited until September.LiPollis (talk) 17:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)