Sunday 18 November 2012

History of Makeup (part 3)

By the French Revolution of 1789 fashion changes developing since 1775 took effect. The new female hair fashion was to wear a wig of arranged curling coils on top of the head letting the natural hair fall loosely down the nape of the neck.

As the 18th century came to a close, all things Roman were in fashion with cropped simple hairstyles. This was soon replaced by a vogue for all styles Greek and the simplicity of freshly washed hair copied from Greek vases was thought attractive.

Women in the 19th century liked to be thought of as fragile ladies. They compared themselves to delicate flowers and emphasised their delicacy and femininity. They aimed always to look pale and interesting. Paleness could be induced by drinking vinegar and avoiding fresh air. Sometimes ladies discreetly used a little rouge on the cheeks, but make-up was frowned upon in general especially during the 1870s when social etiquette became more rigid.

Actresses however were allowed to use make up and famous beauties such as Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry famous beauties of the 1880s could be powdered. Most cosmetic products available were still either chemically dubious, or found in the kitchen amid food colourings, berries and beetroot.

A pale skin was a mark of gentility. It meant that a lady could afford to not work outdoors getting suntanned which was then considered vulgar and coarse. Continuous work in sun and harsh weather coarsened the skin then, as it does now. Parasols were de rigueur and used to protect the complexion. Rooms were shuttered with dark heavy velvet curtains to keep out the sun's rays.

During this time it was thought that a woman's crowning glory was her hair. It was rarely cut, usually only in severe illness. It was also supplemented by false hair depending on the current fashion.

After 1886, Harriet Hubbard Ayer promoted face creams and various anti-ageing products. Before that, little that was satisfactory had been available.


 Eugene Rimmel (1820-1887) was a French perfumer and businessman responsible for manufacturing and marketing some of the earliest commercially made cosmetics. The most innovative invention might be the first commercial non-toxic mascara product. It became so popular that rimmel is to this day the word for mascara in several languages including French, Italian, Persian, Spanish and Turkish and German.

 As photography steadily became more popular, from 1870 to 1900, so too did cosmetics. An amateur photographer of the time referred to photographs as “permanent mirrors,” while Oliver Wendell Holmes, upon viewing Mathew Brady’s photographs of Civil War battlefields, called the camera a “mirror with a memory.” Increasingly, sitters insisted that their images be improved upon for the special occasion of a portrait. Enameling—lacquering the face with white paint— therefore came into vogue. “American women who ordinarily shunned paint requested it at photographers’ studios,” according to historian Kathy Peiss. H. J. Rodgers, in his 1872 manual of photography, advised women not just on what clothing was most flattering in a portrait but also provided them with many pages of cosmetic recipes. Clearly, women took advantage of such concoctions, as the photographs themselves attest. In a series of portraits from the 1880s, for example, Baby Doe Tabor, who married a silver magnate in the Colorado town of Leadville, displays eyebrows unapologetically darkened by artificial means. Stage actress Charlotte “Lottie” Mignon Crabtree unabashedly wore kohl on her eyes (and rouge on her lips) in the carte de visites she passed out liberally to her fans. Photographer Henry Peach Robinson lamented the vanity of his clients. “All kinds of powders and cosmetics were brought into play,” he said, “until sitters did not think they were being properly treated if their faces and hair were not powdered until they looked like a ghastly mockery of the clown in a pantomime.”

1900-1907  several entrepeneurs started selling door to door mostly hair remedies and  Sarah  McWilliams made herself with persistence a Millionaire.
Other than that a lot of hair straighteners came around as well as permanent wave solutions and curlers.

By 1909 Selfridges opened in London's Oxford Street and they openly sold cosmetics. Cosmetics displays were openly visible to the customers and were no longer hidden under the counter. 

Elizabeth Arden (December 31, 1878 - October 19, 1966) was a Canadian businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States. Still in 1909, Arden formed a partnership with Elizabeth Hubbard, another culturist. When the partnership dissolved, she coined the business name "Elizabeth Arden" from her former partner and from Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden".

In 1912, Arden travelled to France to learn beauty and facial massage techniques used in the Paris beauty salons. She returned with a collection of rouges and tinted powders she had created. In an era when it was only acceptable for stage performers to wear makeup, Arden introduced modern eye makeup to North America. She also introduced the concept of the "makeover" in her salons.

Arden collaborated with A. Fabian Swanson, a chemist, to create a "fluffy" face cream. The success of the cream, called Venetian Cream Amoretta, and corresponding lotion, named Arden Skin Tonic, led to a long-lasting business relationship. This revolutionized cosmetics, bringing a scientific approach to formulations. other innovations included creating foundations that matched a person's skin tone; creating the idea of the "Total Look" in which lip, cheek, and fingernail colors matched or coordinated; and the first to make a cosmetics commercial shown in movie houses.

The word mascara derives from the Italian maschera, which means "mask" from Middle Latin masca or Arabic Maskhara or from Old Occitan masco. Modern mascara was created in 1913 by a chemist named T. L. Williams for his sister, Mabel. This early mascara was made from coal dust mixed with Vaseline petroleum jelly. The product was a success with Mabel, and Williams began to sell his new product through the mail. His company Maybelline, a combination of his sister's name and Vaseline, eventually became a leading cosmetics company that we know today.

Max Factor, Sr. (1877 - August 30, 1938), born Factorowitz or Faktorowicz in Poland (then Russian Empire), was a businessman and cosmetician who founded the Max Factor Cosmetics Company. He is known as the father of modern cosmetics.

Factor’s father was a rabbi and could not afford formal education for his ten children. Aged eight, Factor was placed in apprenticeship to a dentist/pharmacist.

He opened his own shop in a suburb of Moscow, selling hand-made rouges, creams, fragrances, and wigs. His big break came when a traveling theatrical troupe wore Factor’s make-up to perform for Russian nobility. The Russian nobility appointed Factor the official cosmetic expert for the royal family and the Imperial Russian Grand Opera.

In 1904, Factor and his family emigrated to the United States. Factor made a new start in St. Louis, Missouri, at the 1904 World’s Fair. He sold his rouges and creams, operating under the newly re-spelled name Max Factor. Factor saw an opportunity to provide make-up and wigs to the growing film industry. He moved his family to Los Angeles, California, in 1908. In 1914, Factor created a make-up specifically for movie actors that, unlike theatrical make-up, would not crack or cake. Soon, movie stars were filing through Max Factor’s make-up studio, eager to sample the “flexible greasepaint” while movie producers sought Factor’s human hair wigs. He allowed the wigs to be rented to the producers of old Westerns on the condition that his sons were given parts. The boys would keep an eye on the expensive wigs. Factor marketed a range of cosmetics to the public in the 1920s, insisting that every girl could look like a movie star by using Max Factor make-up.

 Lipstick became widely popular after Maurice Levy's 1915 invention of the metal lipstick container. It was available in salve, liquid, and stick forms, and long-lasting, indelible stains were the most popular. "Natural" lipgloss was also invented, which used bromo acid to create a red effect as it reacted with the wearer's skin. Finally, flavored lipstick was also popular, with the most popular variety being cherry.

In the 1920s, different products were also developed that showed the decade's preoccupation with shaping the mouth. Metal lip tracers, made in various sizes to satisfy the wishes of the wearer, were developed to ensure flawless lipstick application. Helena Rubinstein created a product called "Cupid's Bow," that billed itself as a "self-shaping lipstick that forms a perfect cupid's bow as you apply it." The development of the mirrored lipstick container in the 1920s also points to the importance of shaping the lips through the application of lipstick.

 The eyebrow pencil really took off in the 1920s, in part because it was technologically superior to what it had been, due to a new ingredient: hydrogenated cottonseed oil (also the key constituent of another wonder product of that era, Crisco Oil). This likely helped the pencil glide more easily and, just as important, kept it from “blooming” with bacteria.

Greta Garbo wielded the eyebrow pencil skillfully and in doing so transformed the face of America. When she arrived in Hollywood, Garbo was an “unretouched Swedish dumpling” who had “the shadow of a double chin, frizzy hair, and slightly buck teeth.”

 The fair-skinned trend continued up until the end of the Victorian era. Niels Finsen was awarded the Novel Prize in medicine in 1903 for his “Finsen Light Therapy” . This therapy was to cure infectious diseases such as lupus vulgaris and rickets disease. Shortly thereafter, in the 1920’s, Coco Chanel accidentally got burnt while visiting the French Riviera. Her fans apparently liked the look and started to adopt darker skin tones themselves. In addition, Parisians fell in love with Josephine Baker, a “caramel-skinned” singer in Paris. These two French women were two trendsetters of the transformation of tanned skin being viewed as fashionable, healthy, and luxurious .In the 1940’s, women’s magazines started using advertisements that encouraged sun bathing. At this time, tanning oil and bathing suits that left little to the imagination were coming out. In the early 1930's, South Australian chemist, HA Milton Blake, experimented to produce a sunburn cream.In 1944, Florida pharmacist, Benjamin Green invented a suntan cream in his kitchen that became "Coppertone Suntan Cream."

 One “Mrs. Brown,” as she would later be referred to in a congressional hearing, let herself be talked into having her eyelashes and brows dyed. “Mrs. Brown’s laughing blue eyes have been blinded forever,”34 Ruth deForest Lamb wrote in her American Chamber of Horrors, a 1936 book detailing a number of horrific products consumed by the American public in the name of beauty (including the depilatory Koremlu as well as mercury-based skin “whiteners”).
Congress, urged on by Lamb’s book and after numerous chest-thumping congressional hearings, finally acted to regulate cosmetics in 1938. But the controversy over such products as Lash Lure was widely publicized long before then.
The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act brought cosmetics and medical devices under control, and it required that drugs be labeled with adequate directions for safe use. Moreover, it mandated pre-market approval of all new drugs, such that a manufacturer would have to prove to FDA that a drug were safe before it could be sold. It irrefutably prohibited false therapeutic claims for drugs, although a separate law granted the Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction over drug advertising. The act also corrected abuses in food packaging and quality, and it mandated legally enforceable food standards. Tolerances for certain poisonous substances were addressed. The law formally authorized factory inspections, and it added injunctions to the enforcement tools at the agency's disposal.

 Though the Depression cut into the beauty business, it eventually proved a boon by getting more women out to work, making them more conscious of their appearance. In World War II Washington politicians foolishly talked of abolishing the beauty industry for the duration to save materials. But wiser heads prevailed. (When Hitler banned makeup, the women of Germany simply refused to work.) The industry put its lipsticks in cardboard containers, found substitutes for strategic materials. One substitute: a cream type of hair tonic that is outselling the older oil type today. By war's end, sales of cosmetics had increased 53%.

 World War II has a dramatic effect on women's position in society. The absence of men forces them to step into traditional male roles at home and at work. Fabrics are scarce, and the austere mood is reflected in practical clothes in muted shades. Max Factor introduces stocking cream in response to shortages. Make-up fulfils an important role as an instant feminiser and affordable morale booster, and is even produced in shades to match air-raid shelters and gas masks. Red lipstick is seen as a symbol of patriotism, as women defy hardship by maintaining their appearance.

 It was soon after World War II that Miss Bishop, a trained chemist who had worked in a dermatologist's laboratory, developed a nondrying, nonirritating, long-wearing lipstick. (Long-lasting types contain high amounts of colorants called bromo acids that have staining qualities.)

In 1950, she formed Hazel Bishop Inc. to manufacture and market her discovery. ''Never again need you be embarrassed by smearing friends, children, relatives, husband, sweetheart,'' the early advertising said, pointing out that older formulations tended to leave greasy marks on glasses, cigarettes and teeth. And the new brand did not have to be applied several times a day.

The brand found instant acceptance. When it was introduced that summer at $1 a tube, Lord & Taylor sold out its stock on the first day. The brand soon captured 25 percent of the fast-growing lipstick market and locked horns with Charles Revson of Revlon in ''the lipstick war.''

 An explosion of colour – in everything from films and furniture to clothes and make-up – epitomises post-war optimism. There is a renewed emphasis on the family. A shortage of men encourages women to try to look as beautiful as possible in the hope of 'catching' a husband. As women return to domestic duties, technological advances result in a whole host of new labour-saving devices for the home, giving them more time to pamper themselves. A boom in the luxury beauty industry – led by Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein – ensues. Avon calls for the first time, and the door-to-door cosmetics rep remains the bored housewives' best friend for the next 20 years.

 In an era of increased political activity, the women's liberation movement emerges, generating a backlash against the concept of prettying oneself to please men. Women also realise that the beauty industry is governed by and perpetuated by men, and eschew the defiant lipstick-wearing of their suffragette sisters to denounce make-up and embrace the natural look. The publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch inspires an anti-establishment look. Boiler suits are donned, bras are burned and women stop shaving their armpits and legs. Despite the growing assertion of black culture – symbolised by the popularity of the Afro hairstyle – major cosmetics companies continue to ignore the need for a beauty range suited to darker skins. Iman, a Somali-born diplomat's daughter, becomes the first black supermodel.

 Materialism and consumerism are the buzzwords and a super-glam look personifies the get-rich-quick philosophy of the times. Vanity is celebrated and decadent; expertly applied make-up symbolises the high-maintenance grooming of the trophy wife. The 'Princess Di' becomes the most popular hairstyle of the decade. Paradoxically, the increasing profile of animal rights groups highlights the vivisection inherent in the survival of the cosmetics industry. Growing consumer unease is appeased by The Body Shop. Founder Anita Roddick's aim of sourcing cruelty-free and natural ingredients from ancient cultures and threatened communities, while highlighting global issues, proves that conscience shopping can be a commercial winner.

 Consumers become increasingly sophisticated. A desire to enhance one's natural beauty with lighter, less visible formulas results in a scientific approach to cosmetics that appeals to users. Cosmetics no longer just cover-up but are 'light-reflecting' and 'wrinkle-defying', too. The battle to rid the body of cellulite with expensive creams and body-toners dominates, while the growing interest in celebrity looks sees top make-up artists such as Bobbi Brown launching highly successful independent ranges. Supermodel Iman, frustrated by the appalling lack of ranges to suit women of colour, succeeds with her own make-up line. Meanwhile, Isabella Rossellini, famously dumped by Lancome for being too old at 43, launches her own Manifesto range, designed to suit women of all ages.

 As the population grows ever older, the urge to remain youthful blossoms and the anti-ageing cream becomes king. Much cosmetic surgery is increasingly accepted as risk free. Quick-fix treatments, such as collagen lip implants and 'Botox' anti-wrinkle injections, can be performed in a lunchtime; while other treatments, such as facial skin peels and electric wave therapy, are increasingly popular.




Of course there is so much more , but I think this is a very good  collection of how Makeup came around and where it went.

to find all these informations i read up in some books, wikipedia  and xtimeline.com 

History of Makeup (part 2)

Romans between 1 - 100 A.D. used  Makeup in different variations.
Khol was still used to darken eyebrows and as eyeliner and mascara.
Chalk and white lead was used to lighten complexions in Greco-Roman society. Some form of Rouge was worn on the cheeks.

The world's oldest cosmetic face cream, complete with the finger marks of its last user 2,000 years ago, has been found by archaeologists excavating a Roman temple on the banks of London's River Thames.
Measuring 6 cm by 5 cm, the tightly sealed, cylindrical tin can opened to reveal a pungent-smelling white cream.
"It seems to be very much like an ointment, and it's got finger marks in the lid ... whoever used it last has applied it to something with their fingers and used the lid as a dish to take the ointment out," museum curator Liz Barham said as she opened the box.
The superbly made canister, now on display at the museum, was made almost entirely of tin, a precious metal at that time. Perhaps a beauty treatment for a fashionable Roman lady or even a face paint used in temple ritual, the cream is currently undergoing scientific analysis.
"We don't yet know whether the cream was medicinal, cosmetic or entirely ritualistic. We're lucky in London to have a marshy site where the contents of this completely sealed box must have been preserved very quickly - the metal is hardly corroded at all," said Nansi Rosenberg, a senior archaeological consultant on the project.

Cosmetics have been used since ancient times. However, they fell into disuse in most of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was not until the return of the men from the crusades that Europe saw the return of beauty and hygiene aids it had long forgotten. The concept of cosmetics as "face paint" did not really begin to resurface in Northern Europe until the 14th century. Even then, cosmetics were not commonly used outside of the bawdy trades. One excellent source of information for beauty instruction in the 16th century is a conversation manual commonly referred to as "A dialogue of the faire perfectioning of ladies." It is written as a discussion between two kinswomen, Raffaella and Margaret. The downside to the use of face whitening substances is described well by the two kinswomen, Margaret and Rafaella. The toxicity of most of the whitening lotions is clearly evident in this recipe from Raffaella, which is apparently meant for a common person. "...One takes pure silver and quicksilver and, when they are ground in the mortar, one adds ceruse and burnt rock alum, and then for a day they are ground together again and afterwards moistened with mastic until all is liquid; then all is boiled in rain water and, the boiling done, one casts some sublimate upon the mortar; this is done three times and the water cast on the fourth time is kept together with the body of the lye. And this is used oftentimes among ladies who have no great means to spend." Vermillion is red crystalline mercuric sulphide. The pigment was applied by mixing it with gum arabic, egg whites, and the milk of green figs. Other reds that were used were derived from red ocher, madder, cochineal, brasil wood that had been steeped in water and applied with fish glue, and red sandalwood. One feature that was important to the beauty ideal in Elizabethan England was large, luminous eyes. It has been suggested that kohl, which was commonly used in the Middle East and Asia, was employed to emphasize the eyes. It has also been suggested that during the later 16th century, belladonna, or deadly nightshade, began to be used to enlarge the pupil and make the eyes more luminous.

 The first record of this skin-whitener was found in 1521. By the time of Elizabeth's reign it was well-established as an essential item for the fashionable woman. Naturally, spreading lead upon one's skin caused a variety of skin problems; some authors of the time warned against it, describing how it made the skin "grey and shriveled" and suggested other popular mixtures such as paste of alum and tin ash, sulfur and a variety of foundations made using boiled egg white, talc and other white materials as a base. Egg white, uncooked, could also be used to "glaze" the complexion, creating a smooth shell and helping to hide wrinkles. One Elizabethan satirist commented that an artist needed no box of paints to work, but merely a fashionably painted lady standing nearby to use for pigments. Lettice's features also approximate the 16th century standard of beauty: a small, rosy mouth, a straight and narrow nose and wide-set bright eyes under narrow arched brows. Women would use drops of belladonna in their eyes to achieve that bright sparkle and outline them with kohl (powdered antimony) to enhance their size or make them appear more wide set. Plucked eyebrows were de rigeur for a court lady, as was a high brow. A high hairline had been for centuries a sign of the aristocracy. Women would pluck their brow hair back an inch, or even more, to create a fashionably high forehead.

 The earliest mention of the adoption of patching by the ladies of England, occurs in Bulwer's Artificial Changeling (1653). Our ladies, he complains, have lately entertained a vain custom of spotting their faces, out of an affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had; and it is well if one black patch will serve to make their faces remarkable, for some fill their visages full of them, varied into all manner of shapes. The beauties of the court of Louis Quinze thought they had made a notable discovery, when they gummed pieces of black taffeta on their cheeks to heighten the brilliancy of their complexions; but the fops of Elizabethan England had long before anticipated them, by decorating their faces with black stars, crescents, and lozenges:

'To draw an arrant fop from top to toe, Whose very looks at first clash shew him so; Give him a mean, proud garb, a dapper grace, A pert dull grin, a black patch cross his face.'

And the fashion prevailed through succeeding reigns, for Glapthorne writes in 1640: If it be a lover's part you are to act, take a black spot or two; twill make your face more amorous, and appear more gracious in your mistress's eyes.


In Japan at about 1700 the trend of the Geisha errupted into a very popular culture. And their Makeup changed quite a bit.
The traditional makeup of an apprentice geisha features a thick white base with red lipstick and red and black accents around the eyes and eyebrows. Originally, the white base mask was made with lead, but after the discovery that it poisoned the skin and caused terrible skin and back problems for the older geisha towards the end of the Meiji Era, it was replaced with rice powder.
The application of makeup is hard to perfect and is a time-consuming process. Makeup is applied before dressing to avoid dirtying the kimono. First, a wax or oil substance called bintsuke-abura is applied to the skin. Next, white powder is mixed with water into a paste and applied with a bamboo brush starting from the neck and working upwards. The white makeup covers the face, neck, and chest, with two or three unwhitened areas (forming a W or V shape, usually a traditional W shape) left on the nape, to accentuate this traditionally erotic area, and a line of bare skin around the hairline, which creates the illusion of a mask.
After the foundation layer is applied, a sponge is patted all over the face, throat, chest, the nape and neck to remove excess moisture and to blend the foundation. Next the eyes and eyebrows are drawn in. Traditionally, charcoal was used, but today, modern cosmetics are used. The eyebrows and edges of the eyes are colored black with a thin charcoal; a maiko also applies red around her eyes.
The lips are filled in using a small brush. The color comes in a small stick, which is melted in water. Crystallized sugar is then added to give the lips lustre. Rarely will a geisha color in both lips fully in the Western style, as white creates optical illusions and colouring the lips fully would make them appear overly large. The lower lip is colored in partially and the upper lip left white for maiko in her first year, after which the upper lip is also colored. Newly full-fledged geisha will color in only the top lip fully. Most geisha wear the top lip colored in fully or stylized, and the bottom lip in a curved stripe that does not follow the shape of the lip. Geisha round the bottom lips to create the illusion of a flower bud.
Maiko who are in their last stage of training sometimes colour their teeth black for a brief period. This practice used to be common among married women in Japan and, earlier, at the imperial court, but survives only in some districts. It is done partly because uncoloured teeth seem very yellow in contrast to white face makeup; colouring the teeth black means that they seem to "disappear" in the darkness of the open mouth. This illusion is of course more pronounced at a distance.
For the first three years, a maiko wears this heavy makeup almost constantly. During her initiation, the maiko is helped with her makeup either by her onee-san, or "older sister" (an experienced geisha who is her mentor), or by the okaa-san, or "mother" of her geisha house. After this, she applies the makeup herself.
After a maiko has been working for three years, she changes her make-up to a more subdued style. The reason for this is that she has now become mature, and the simpler style shows her own natural beauty. For formal occasions, the mature geisha will still apply white make-up. For geisha over thirty, the heavy white make-up is only worn during those special dances that require it.

 In the beginning of the last century, girls still used Japanese makeup under the name "the Chinese clay" which was prepared on the basis of lead. It was good, except for the fact that when the geisha with the greatest work washed the face from lead muck, her skin sadly drooped and screwed up the face. Now exists the special Japanese makeup for geishas which do not render harm to skin.


 By the 18th century, cosmetics and perfumes had become so popular that the English Parliament passed a law declaring that any woman who "shall impose upon, seduce and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty's subjects by virtue of scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty against witchcraft, and the marriage . . . shall be null and void."

to find all these informations i read up in some books, wikipedia  and xtimeline.com 

History of Make up

A little bit about the history of cosmetics...

Cosmetics were an inherent part of Egyptian hygiene and health, even as early as 10,000 BC. The eye Makeup is the most known and visible sign that this culture used Makeup, but they also used oils and creams for protection from the sun and the harsh dry winds. Scented ointments and oils were not just used to soften and clean the skin, also to mask body odour. They used lots of ingredients that are still used today in  perfumes and body oils for example : Myrrh, thyme, marjoram, chamomile, lavender, lily, peppermint, rosemary, cedar, rose, aloe, olive oil, sesame oil and almond oil. Most of these were also used in the oils for embalming, others just for body lotions and other makeup.
For lips and cheeks they mostly ground down a clay (red ochre) and mixed it with water.
Nails got stained using yellow or orange henna.
The eyes and eyebrows were heavily lined with  khol, a dark coloured powder made of crushed antimony, burnt almonds, lead, oxidised copper, ochre, ash, malachite, chrysocolla (a copper ore, usually blueish green). To frame the eyes in such a dark colour had aesthetic reasons, but also to help prevent sun glare. It was believed that kohl eyeliner could prevent eye infections and restore poor eyesight.

Round about 4000-3100 BC the eye Makeup had changed a bit and also differed in the old, the middle and the new kingdom. The green was originally made from malachite, an oxide of copper. In the Old Kingdom it was applied liberally from the eyebrow to the base of the nose. In the Middle Kingdom, green eye paint continued to be used for the brows and the corners of the eyes, but by the New Kingdom it had been superseded by black. Black eye paint, kohl, was usually made of a sulfide of lead called galena. Its use continued to the Coptic period. By that time, soot was the basis for the black pigment. Both malachite and galena were ground on a palette with either gum and/or water to make a paste. Round-ended sticks made of wood, bronze, haematite, obsidian or glass were used to apply the eye make-up.

Henna was still used as it is still today as a form of hair dye.

Women had boxes with their Makeup and carried it with them to parties. Men also had Makeup boxes, but did not carry them around with them.

Tattoos were known and practised, which was proven by mummies of dancers, concubines and servant girls from the Middle Kingdom, that showed geometric designs and even pictures of the gods.


Nail polish seems to have been originated by the Chinese around 3000 B.C. The Japanese and Italians thought to have been the first ones to actually to use nail polish. The Chinese used a coloured lacquer, made from a combination of gum Arabic, egg whites, gelatin and beeswax. They also used a mixture consisting of mashed rose, orchid and impatien petals combined with alum. This mixture, when applied to nails for a few hours or overnight, leaves a colour ranging from pink to red. The Egyptians used reddish-brown stains derived from the henna plant to colour their nails as well as the tips of their fingers. Today, some people still use henna dyes to draw intricate, temporary designs on their hands in a practice known as Mehndi.

During the Chou Dynasty of 600 B.C., Chinese royalty often chose gold and silver to enhance their nails. A fifteenth-century Ming manuscript cites red and black as the colours chosen by royalty for centuries previous. The Egyptians also used nail colour to signify social order, with shades of red at the top. Queen Nefertiti, wife of the king Akhenaton, coloured her finger and toe nails ruby red and Cleopatra favoured a deep rust red. Women of lower rank who coloured their nails were permitted only pale hues, and no woman dared to flaunt the colour worn by the queen or king. Incas were known for decorating their fingernails with pictures of eagles.

 Around 1500 B.C. records start of Japanese and Chinese citizens using rice powder to whiten their faces.
Very often eyebrows were shaved of and black dye applied to the teeth, which was still quite common about 100 years ago.


The Peak Era of Persian Makeup was between 10,000 and 100 B.C. as archeologist's discovered that men and women applied Makeup and arrayed themselves in ornaments, a trend that was more from religious conviction as for pure beautification.
Several archaeological finds show that Sassanid women were often so attached to their Makeup, that they were burried with it, along with their most worn or favoured ornaments.


to find all these informations i read up in some books, wikipedia  and xtimeline.com

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Interesting Blog Posts

There are a lot of interesting blogs around and even more entries

Interesting for example was Eilidhs blog about her zombie nurse costume and makeup
Eilidhs Blog


A loooong read, but lots of informations especially about the history of make up,are found at Ruths
Ruths Blog

And Emily has also lots of infos , my personal favorite it her post about what she could't live without
Emily's Blog

About Millennium FX

Millennium FX is Europe’s leading supplier of cutting edge prosthetics, animatronics and special make-up FX for film, television, commercials, music promos, theatre and corporate projects.

Millennium's directors Neill Gorton and Rob Mayor are multi-award winning artists, with numerous BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards across make-up and special effects categories. Working with them is a team of the industry's best technicians.
The company has worked on countless productions, from major studio features including Saving Private Ryan and The Wolfman and acclaimed television shows such as the new Doctor Who and Being Human, to iconic theatre for the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest West End show Love Never Dies.
Our comprehensive service is effective for projects of any size, and can include training for production make-up staff on the application of prosthetics where required.

http://www.millenniumfx.co.uk/

Theatre awareness

Whats on where ?


1. Tron theatre

http://www.tron.co.uk/

2. Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

www.lyceum.org.uk

3. Citizens theatre

www.citz.co.uk/

4. Traverse theatre

www.traverse.co.uk/

5. Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Theatre Royal Glasgow

6. Kings theatre, Glasgow

Kings Theatre Glasgow

What we have done in class

Here are some simple videos of what we have done in class

Videos are not mine and I'm not responsible for the content.