History
By the turn of the 19th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed with a chamois cloth, rather than simply polished. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people pursued a polished rather than painted look by massaging tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them shiny. One such polishing product sold around this time was Graf's Hyglo nail polish paste. Some people during this period painted their nails with an air brush. After the creation of automobile paint, Cutex produced the first modern nail polishes in 1917 with the introduction of colored nail glosses.
Nail polish originated in China. It started off being made from a combination of beeswax, egg whites, gelatin, vegetable dyes, and gum arabic. Egyptians used orange henna. The orange henna would stain their fingernails. Back in the 1300 BC, the color of the nail polish symbolized the ranking of social class each individual earned. The colors gold and silver were considered to be the royal colors; however, were later changes to black and red.
Once nail polish was refined, it was often used in the place of gloves to cover up the grime underneath the nails.
Colored nail polish was also considered at one time self-mutilation by psychiatrists and unhealthy. Despite this, the first lady to wear solid colors was Eleanor Roosevelt.
Read more about this topic: Nail Polish
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
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