Tag Archives: makeup

Antiquity, Beauty, Experimentation, Series: Ancient Egyptian Studies, Series: Eyes and Sight, Series: Minerals, Women and Gender

What’s In an Ancient Egyptian Makeup Bag?

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By Alana Martini, published as part of the Undergraduate Series

I have been fascinated by the world of cosmetics for a very long time, and it appears that I am not the only one. Our love affair with cosmetics is almost as old as humanity itself. Large amounts of red ochre were found, dating roughly from 100 to 125,000 years ago during excavations in South African caves – these are presumed to be have been used to paint the body and the face. One might say that this desire to adorn ourselves with cosmetics is an intrinsic part of the human experience, as it is shared practice across different cultures.

From the various looks we have sported across the centuries, the Ancient Egyptian look stands out as one of the more memorable ones in the history of makeup. This is not a surprise, for the Ancient Egyptians were avid lovers of cosmetics. Their heavily kohl-lined eyes are instantly recognizable and often recreated in Hollywood blockbusters, the most famous portrayal being Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra.

Earlier on this year, I embarked on a project that involved studying Ancient Egyptian cosmetics and a subsequent reconstruction of a typical “Egyptian look” from the New Kingdom. This research culminated in a short video tutorial. Although cosmetics were used by both genders, my analysis focused on women only. Here are a few of the main conclusions that I have reached along the way:

In the beginning, cosmetics served a practical purpose: to protect the wearer from the harsh rays of the sun. Malachite, one of the principal ingredients used in eye paints, shielded the eyes by absorbing some of the sun’s rays, and the oil they mixed it with would catch the dust from the desert. Another prominent ingredient in eye paints was galena, which helped to prevent and treat eye diseases. Thus, a very popular combination for eye makeup consisted of malachite used as a green eye shadow and galena to line the eyes. It is not clear whether the ancient Egyptians were aware of the properties of their ingredients, but it is known that they were experts in wet chemistry, often creating mixtures that required complex procedures as long ago as 2000 BC.

However, the use of cosmetics for women went beyond practicality. There is strong evidence to suggest that, as most women today, Egyptian women enjoyed applying makeup purely for beautification. I stress the word “women” here, for only they are depicted during acts of beautification on wall reliefs.

Image 1: Painting from the tomb of Nakht depicting three women (Google images)

Judging by the evidence, it appears that women wore more makeup than men which, I suspect, has its roots in their biological difference. For instance, the contrast between facial features and facial skin is more pronounced in women than in men, and women’s use of makeup enhances this and influences the attractiveness of a given face.  In the Egyptian case, the brows were darkened and the eyes lined with kohl to accentuate this contrast. Other colours were used as well; the ancient palette consisted of blue, turquoise, terracotta, and different shades of brown and grey. Many samples of eye paint have been found in graves in the form of a paste (which has dried up over time) or more commonly as a powder.

Moreover, it has been posited that redness in the cheeks enhances “apparent health and attractiveness, particularly in female faces.” To “fake” redness, the Egyptian woman would have used red ochre, a pigment that occurs naturally in the Egyptian desert. This deep burnt orange shade was also most likely used as a lip tint, although there is no definite proof to support this. Red has been a popular choice as a lip colour through time in diverse cultures – the colour red appears to us “exciting and stimulating,” and lip redness makes a woman’s face more attractive and feminine. From my own observations, I strongly believe that this was the case, especially if we consider the vibrant lip shade on the Nefertiti bust.

Images 2 and 3: A side by side comparison between the Nefertiti bust and my modern reconstruction. I have used red ochre, and the reader will note that the lip shade is strikingly similar.

What does all of this tell us about Ancient Egyptian practices regarding cosmetics? Egyptian women, like many women today, enjoyed applying cosmetics to their face. Although an authentic Egyptian look would appear caricature-like in today’s society, there are certain elements that could easily be identified in a modern woman’s routine – the red lips or the kohl-lined eyes, for instance. Contemporary women try and achieve similar results as their Egyptian predecessors, just not in the same intensity. Beautification was an important part of a woman’s life, and it proves that we are not so dissimilar after all. The desire to adorn ourselves remains every bit as strong as four millennia ago.

References

Betrò, M. 2017. «Bello come il cielo»: il senso del bello nell’antico Egitto. Storia Delle Donne, 12(1), 81-96.

Corson, R. 2003. Fashions in Makeup: From Ancient to Modern Times. London: Peter Owen Publishers.

Eldridge, L. 2015. Face Paint: The Story of Makeup. New York: Abrams Image.

Lucas, A. 1930. Cosmetics, Perfumes and Incense in Ancient Egypt. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 16(1/2), 41-53.

Manniche, L. 1999. Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt. London: Opus Publishing Limited.

Mikkelides, B. 2012. Colour psychology: the emotional effects of colour perception. In Best, J. (ed.): Colour Design: Theories and Applications. Oxford: Woodhead Publishing.

Russell, R. 2003. Sex, beauty and the relative luminance of facial features. Perception 32, 1093-1107.

Stephen, I. and McKeegan, A. 2010. Lip color affects perceived sex typicality and attractiveness. Perception 39, 1104-1110.

Walter, P., Martinetto, P., Tsoucaris, G., Brniaux, R., Lefebvre, M.A., Richard, G., Talabot, J., Dooryhee, E. 1999. Making make-up in Ancient Egypt. Nature volume 397, 483–484.

Watterson, B. 1991. Women in Ancient Egypt. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Tales from the Archives

Tales from the Archives: THEATRICAL COSMETICS: MAKING FACE, MAKING “RACE”

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In September 2016, The Recipes Project celebrated its fourth birthday. We now have over 500 posts in our archives and over 120 pages for readers to sift through. That’s a lot of material! (And thank you so much to our contributors for sharing such a wealth of knowledge on recipes.) But with so much material on the site, it’s easy for earlier pieces to be forgotten. So, the editors have decided that, every now and then, we’ll pull something out of the archives to share with our readers anew.

This month I’d like to share a 2014 post by Jessica Clark.  It offers a rich, revealing look into the ways that race and gender were performed, made, mocked, and manipulated in 19th and 20th c. British-American white theatre.  It’s a timely and important piece.  We hope that you enjoy this latest installment from our Recipes Project Archives, and if you have any posts that you’d like for us to revisit, please send in your nominations…
AH (editor)

*****

By Jessica Clark

Dan Leno as “Sister Anne” in a 1901 Drury Lane production of Bluebeard. Wikimedia Commons.
Dan Leno as “Sister Anne” in a 1901 Drury Lane production of Bluebeard. Wikimedia Commons.

In the world of British theatre, nothing marks the holiday season like the annual pantomime. A traditional panto features all the requisite elements of family entertainment: a wicked villain, slapstick that delights both young and old, and, perhaps most importantly, the archetypal Dame, a male actor in female costume. While all panto characters wear some form of makeup, the pantomime Dame’s overdrawn brows, gaudy eye shadow, and exaggerated lips are especially emblematic of this particular theatrical form. Despite evoking feminine beauty traits, the Dame is embellished to the point of farce.[i]

Theatrical makeup like that of the Dame has a long history in the Anglo world, dating back to Elizabethan productions on the south shore of the Thames.[ii] By the late nineteenth century, actors created their stage looks using greasepaint, a major development in modern theatrical makeup. Greasepaint was a German innovation created and refined by two different theatre men. Endeavoring to conceal the seam of his wig in the 1860s, Carl Baudin of the Leipziger Stadt Theatre first mixed a concoction of yellow ochre, zinc white, vermillion, and lard.[iii] By 1873, Ludwig Leichner, a Berlin chemist who moonlighted as an opera singer, marketed a stick greasepaint that would become ubiquitous in the theatre world.[iv]

But what did theatrical performers use before the invention and marketing of commercial greasepaint? Actors relied on a range of time-honored techniques to provide coverage and illumination in the glare of nineteenth-century footlights. At times, common cosmetics were used to fashion looks for the stage: vermillion for rouging the cheeks, Indian ink for contouring the eyes or eyebrows, and violet powder for refining the complexion. But it was also possible to alter recipes for run-of-the-mill paints to make them suitable for the theatre. For example, “Rouge de Theatre” was created from “Rouge Vegetal” – a natural concoction of safflowers and carbonate of soda – by adding mucilage of gum tragacanth, which hardened the rouge into a dry, vivid powder.[v]

Advertisement in Frank Castles’ _Drawing Room Monologues_(1887) 50. Image courtesy of Google Books.
Advertisement in Frank Castles’ _Drawing Room Monologues_(1887) 50. Image courtesy of Google Books.

In other cases, actors relied on ingredients better suited to the chemist’s laboratory than a dressing room. No actor’s makeup kit was without powders like dry whiting (finely powdered chalk), burnt umber (calcified brown earth used as a pigment), and fuller’s earth (a hydrous silicate of alumina).[vi] Actors mixed such powders with grease or lard to create vibrant unguents, which they applied to the face. By the mid-nineteenth century, enterprising businessmen sold these powders as part of elaborate “Make-Up Boxes,” but individual ingredients were as readily available at the local druggist.

Frontispiece of S.J. Adair Fitzgerald’s _How to “Make-Up”_ (1901). Image courtesy of Archive.org
Frontispiece of S.J. Adair Fitzgerald’s _How to “Make-Up”_ (1901). Image courtesy of Archive.org

Yet, theatrical powders and paints were not merely used to brighten the cheeks and highlight the lips. English theatrical guides of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries highlight other, problematic cosmetic practices that were, until quite recently, common in the Anglo theatre tradition. White actors dominated the profession and relied on makeup to “transform” into characters of different ethnicities. Theatrical guides from the period foreground this history, offering detailed instructions on “making up” the Othered face. Guides included step-by-step processes for creating “the distinctive colorings of the English, Italians, Japanese, Indians, or Africans,” simultaneously eliding race, nationality, and ethnicity.[vii]

Cosmetic recipes and techniques were key to fashioning these stereotyped “national” looks. To create “Indian” characters, for example, actors mixed lard with a pigment known as “Mongolian” to produce a light brown color for the face and hands (“Mulattoes may be treated in the same matter,” suggested one American author[viii]). To portray black characters, actors used lumps of burnt cork “as large as a hazel nut,” which were reduced with water and applied to the face with both hands.[ix] By the early twentieth century, the racial underpinnings of theatrical makeup was codified in commercial greasepaint sticks; the lightest shade was known as “No. 1: Very pale flesh color,” while Nos. 18 through 20 were characterized as “East Indian, Hindoos, Filipino, Malays, etc.,” “Japanese,” and “Negroes,” respectively.[x]

Dan Leno as “Widow Twankey,” in an 1896 Drury Lane production of Aladdin. Wikimedia Commons.
Dan Leno as “Widow Twankey,” in an 1896 Drury Lane production of Aladdin. Wikimedia Commons.

Ultimately, theatre functioned as a site of fantasy in the modern Anglo world, whisking audiences away from the drudgery of daily life. Theatrical makeup was central to the construction of this fantasy, and actors became masters at creating illusion via powder and paint. At times, such illusions had the potential to challenge dominant social and gender norms, as in the case of the late-Victorian Dame with her penciled brows. However, as the creation of “national” looks suggests, theatrical makeup also functioned to reify essentialized notions of race and nationality circulating in the Anglo imperial world.[xi]

[i] For recent work on the Victorian Dame, see Jim Davis, “’Slap On! Slap Ever!’: Victorian pantomime, gender variance, and cross-dressing,” New Theatre Quarterly 30.3 (August 2014): 218-230.

[ii] Annette Drew-Bear, Painted Faces on the Renaissance Stage: the moral significance of face-painting conventions (London: Assoicated University Presses, 1994).

[iii] Maurice Hageman, Hageman’s Make-up Book: grease-paints, their origin, use and application, a useful and up-to-date hand book on practical make-up, especially prepared for amateurs and professionals (Chicago: Dramatic Publishing Co, 1898) 11 and Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “stagecraft”, accessed 02 November 2014 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/562420/stagecraft>.

[iv] Geoffrey Jones, Beauty Imagined: a history of the global beauty industry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). For an excellent survey of the history of greasepaint, and cosmetics more generally, see James Bennett, “Greasepaint,” Cosmetics and Skin <http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/bcb/greasepaint.php>.

[v] Richard S. Cristiani, Perfumery and Kindred Arts: a comprehensive treatise on perfumery (Philadelphia: H.C. Baird, 1877) 152.

[vi] Definitions of these powders courtesy of The Oxford English Dictionary.

[vii] Cavendish Morton, The Art of Theatrical Make-Up (London: 1909) 16.

[viii] DeWitt’s How to Manage Amateur Theatricals (New York: DeWitt, 1880) 46.

[ix] James Young, Making Up (London: M. Witmark & Sons, 1905) 85.

[x] Young 12.

[xi] On the acts themselves, see Jacqueline S. Bratton et al, Acts of Supremacy: the British Empire and the stage, 1790-1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), especially chapter 5; Martin Clayton and Bennett Zon, eds., Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007); and Hazel Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage: representation of slavery and the black character (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). On music hall, see Penny Summerfield, “Patriotism and Empire: music-hall entertainment 1870-1914,” Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. John M. Mackenzie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) 17-48.

*****
Jessica Clark (B.A., Trent; M.A., York; M.A., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins) teaches British history at Brock University. Her interests include British cultural and social history, urban space and the lived environment, empire, and women, gender, and sexuality. Her research explores intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity in the modern British world via the history of beauty and appearance.

Clark’s work appears in the Women’s History Review and the forthcoming Gender and Material Culture in Britain after 1600 (Palgrave 2015). She is currently revising a manuscript on the role of Victorian entrepreneurs in developing England’s early beauty industry. She is also working on a new project, “Imperial Beauty,” which investigates transnational commodity and cultural flows linking London-based beauty brokers and imperial markets in British India, the West Indies, and Australia.

Art, Beauty, Medieval, Series: Colors, Series: Italian Studies, Series: Poisons and Toxins, Women and Gender

Medieval Makeup ‘Artists’. Painting Wood and Skin

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by Marjolijn Bol

What there is stays the same. That she can never change.                                                                        Jan van Boendale (ca. 1280 – ca. 1351)

For art historians, one of the most important and best-known ‘recipe books’ is  Cennino Cennini’s (c. 1370 – c. 1440) Il Libro dell’arte (The Craftman’s Handbook). The Italian treatise is famous because it offers the reader many detailed recipes that explain how to make a panel painting. These include the preparation of wood so that one can paint on it, how to make paint from egg and pigments, how to make brushes, how to paint draperies, faces and beards, and, finally, how to varnish the finished work with a mixture of oil and resin (the ‘tears’ from trees such as amber) so that it becomes it shiny and is protected from dust and dirt (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Giovanni Boccaccio, Marcia painting her self-portrait from De Claris Mulieribus (Of famous women, written 1361), early fifteenth century illumination, Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, ms. 13420, f.101v
Fig. 1. Giovanni Boccaccio, Marcia painting her self-portrait from De Claris Mulieribus (Of famous women, written 1361), early fifteenth century illumination, Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, ms. 13420, f.101v

Little known, however, is the fact that Cennini also writes that painters were sometimes asked to be ‘makeup artists’:

In excercise of your profession, you will sometimes have to stain or paint on flesh, chiefly to paint the face of a man or woman.1

Cennini explains that there are three methods for painting faces. You can have the colors or pigments tempered with egg, or, when you want to make the face more brilliant, with linseed oil or varnish (the oil-resin mixture). Cennini writes furthermore that in order to clean the face, one takes egg yolks and, gradually rubbing them on the face with the hands, this removes the face paint. The fact that panel painters were asked to be make-up artists, begins to make more sense when we consider the fact that for painting on wood and the face many similar materials were used (figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2. Shared materials panel painter and face painter, left to right: Egg, linseed oil, resin tears, dried resin (mastic) and below: two pigments: white lead and vermillion.
Fig. 2. Shared materials panel painter and face painter, left to right: Egg, linseed oil, resin tears, dried resin (mastic) and below, two pigments: white lead and vermillion.

Fig. 3. Bernardo Daddi, detail Virgin Mary's face, 14th century. Egg-based paint on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. nr. 1064)
Fig. 3. Bernardo Daddi, detail Virgin Mary’s face, 14th century, egg-based paint on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. nr. 1064.

There are in fact many more painter’s recipe books that include instructions for making face paint. The fifteenth century German Strasburg manuscript for instance, a collection of recipes for painting in books and on panel, also provides us with an instruction for making a face paint from the resin mastic.2

Another interesting  source that reflects the similarities between panel painting practice and face painting practice is the fourteenth century poem Jan Teesteye (ca. 1330-1334) written in Middle Dutch by Jan van Boendale (ca. 1280 – ca. 1351). In the section of his verse that deals with ‘women and their bad habits’ Van Boendale compares the crèmes and ointments used by women to cover up facial irregularities to the painter’s varnish:

They (the women) grease and anoint their faces, to appear beautiful, and admired by many;but as a painter varnishes an image with all its deceiving decoration, shining beautifully as if though it were solid gold, it is, on the inside, still wood; So a woman, has varnished her skin to make it look beautiful and shining, it is, however, still a futile thing; What there is stays the same. That she can never change.3

Thus, for Van Boendale, women who varnish their faces are like the painter who has varnished his work, embellished with fake jewels, glistening beautifully like gold but, ultimately, on the inside still made from wood (fig. 4). This way, Van Boendale uses the practice of make-believe in painting to compare it to another aspect of fourteenth century material culture; how women sometimes fool us with their counterfeit beauty created with face paint. What makes van Boendale’s comparison even more interesting is that he synonymously uses the Middle Dutch word ‘vernis’ for both the cosmetics used by ladies to smooth their faces and the final varnish layer applied by painters to make a painting look smooth and shiny (and protect it).

Cennino Cennini, like Van Boendale, also had some critique on the practice of painting faces. Contrary, however, to Van Boendale’s moral critique on the trickery involved in face painting, Cennini, as a painter, was well aware of the health risks involved in using some of the painter’s materials for painting the skin:

But I will tell you that if you wish to keep your complexion for a long time, you must make a practice of washing in water – spring or well or river: warning you that if you adopt any artificial preparations your countenance soon becomes withered, and your teeth black; and in the end ladies grow old before the course of time; they come out the most hideous old women imaginable.4 

Cennini was certainly right to warn against face paint. At least since antiquity many of the materials used on the face included toxic ingredients, such as the pigment lead white for applying a ‘foundation’, or vermillion for making one’s cheeks look red and blushing. Such pigments poisoned the person using it, and, eventually, could even lead to death. Here the old Dutch proverb – that one has to suffer for beauty – applies a little too well.

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1. Daniel Varney Thompson (ed.), The Craftsman’s Handbook: the Italian “Il libro dell’ arte”. Cennino Cennini, New York, 1960, p. 123 and for the Italian see: Fabio Frezzato (ed.), Il libro dell’arte. Cennino Cennini, Vicenza, 2004, p. 203 [nr. CLXXIX].

2. Rosamund Borradaile and Viola Borradaile, The Strasburg manuscript: A medieval painter’s handbook/Das Strassburger Manuskript: Handbuch für Maler des Mittelalters, München, 1976, p. 83.

3. Gerrit Komrij, De Nederlandse poëzie van de twaalfde tot en met de zestiende eeuw in duizend en enige bladzijden, Amsterdam, 1994, p. 103, English translation by author

4. Thompson (ed.), The Craftsman’s Handbook, p. 123.