More on the Makeup Box

Scanning my Twitter feed back in December, I got excited when I spotted what looked like an early twentieth century photograph of a man wearing some dramatic makeup.

I immediately thought of the makeup box I blogged about a few months ago.

Sure enough, the Tweet pointed me toward an excellent blog post about theatrical makeup (and getups meant to evoke specific nationalities or ethnicities) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author, Jessica Clark, is a professor of history at Brock University and is working on the early beauty industry (as her faculty profile explains). This is great to know, as I had a difficult time finding a ton of info I could use to figure out what kind of makeup my box contains. Jessica speculated that perhaps the "mystery makeup" is mustache cosmetic. Like any good connoisseur, though, she noted that it's hard to tell without seeing it in person.

Either way, I'm so happy to have learned more about this antiquing find!

Anyone want to do some analytical testing on the box's contents for me?

In the mean time, see you at the paper show in Elton, MD!