Behind the Scenes of Beds, Baths & Beyond #7

Skin Care and Cosmetics Part 4

1850

Rouge, Liquid: Take carmine, 2 parts, pearlash, 1 part, and water, 9 parts; mix.

Pearlash; (potassium carbonate. pearl ash) the primary component in potash, a white salt that softens hard water, used in soap and as a mild drying agent.

Pearl Powders, for the Complexion:

1. Take pearl or bismuth white, and French chalk, equal parts. Reduce them to a fine powder, and sift through lawn.

2. Take 1 pound white bismuth, 1 ounce starch powder, and 1 ounce orris powder; mix and sift them through lawn. Add a drop of attar of roses or neroli.

Pearl White: Take nitrate of bismuth in solution, and add it to a dilute solution of chloride of sodium until the whole of the bismuth is precipitated; collect, wash, and dry the powder with great care.

Bismuth; a white, crystalline, brittle metal (element) with a pinkish tinge as it oxidises.

Lawn; a plain weave linen.

Orris; a root from Iris flowers, used as a fixative with other substances to ensure stability.

Nitrate of bismuth; bismuth and concentrated nitric acid.

Chloride of sodium; (sodium chloride) salt.

**We do not recommend you try these recipes at home.  

Behind the Scenes of Beds, Baths & Beyond #6

Skin Care and Cosmetics Part 3

To Blacken the Eye-lashes and Eye-brows: The simplest preparation for this purpose are the juice of elder-berries; burnt cork, or cloves burnt at the candle. Some employ the black of frankincense, resin, and mastic; this black, it is said, will not come off with perspiration.

Frankincense; an aromatic resin obtained from the Boswellia family of trees.

Mastic; a resin obtained from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus), it is harvested as a hard brittle translucent yellow resin, but then worked (chewed) it softens and becomes a bright white and opaque gum with a slightly pine or cedar flavour, and was used as a breath-freshener and teeth-whitener; used in make-up as a bonding agent.

Rouge, For the Complexion: Take carmine in fine powder, one part, and levigated French chalk, 5 parts, mix.

Carmine; a bright red dye produced from the shells of the      cochineal insect.

                                                     French chalk; soap-stone, or stealite, is a magnesian mineral, harder than ordinary talc, which it otherwise resembles, and forming a whiter and richer powder.

**We do not recommend you try these recipes at home.  

Behind the Scenes of Beds, Baths & Beyond #5

Skin Care and Cosmetics Part 2

Lip Salve la Rose: Take an ounce of alkanet root and 12 ounces of olive oil, digest with a gentle heat, then add 16 ounces of suet and 8 ounces of lard. Strain, and while cooling, stir in 3 ounces of rose-water and 3 drops of attar of roses.

Attar; a natural perfume or essential oil extracted from the juices of flowers, herbs, spices, tree bark, &c.

Macerate; to soften or break into pieces using a liquid.

Spermaceti; a white translucent liquid wax found in the head cavity of the sperm whale.

**We do not recommend you try these recipes at home.  

Behind the Scenes of Beds, Baths & Beyond #4

Skin Care and Cosmetics

Should a reader be interested in reproducing these pre-1860 concoctions, please exercise caution, and substitute any toxic ingredients with safer equivalents.

The New Family Receipt-Book, printed in 1811, London, by Squire & Warwick, price seven shillings and sixpence was printed several years running with updates and additions, until at least 1837. The information was copied and used in many publications.

Receipt; recipe, receipt meaning a record of an amount, not necessarily money.

Lip Salve: Take 1 ounce of white wax and ox marrow, 3 ounces of white pomatum, and melt all in a bath heat; add a drachm of alkanet, and stir it till it acquire a reddish colour. 

White wax; bleached beeswax.

Pomatum; an old word for pomade, the primary ingredient bear fat.

Pommade; a French and older spelling of pomade, a greasy waxy substance for the hair, lips, eyelids, &c, (but in modern usage it is for the hair, as other words have come into use), with the primary ingredient bear fat, but including beeswax, lard, petroleum jelly, &c, and scented with essential oils.

Drachm; (a dram) 1 eighth of an ounce in solid or liquid measure, equal to a teaspoon in the old apothecaries’ system of measurement.

Alkanet; or dyer’s bugloss (Alkanna tictoria) is a plant of the borage family, the roots of which are used to produce red dye.