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An Original Eighteenth Century Washball Recipe |
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Transcribed from the original and annotated by Sally Pointer |
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In the eighteenth century washballs were a popular way to beautify the hands and complexion. The simplest ones were made from soap shavings mixed with cosmetic powders and fragrant water, but more elaborate ones might be coloured or marbled to create a work of art as well as a cosmetic accessory. Frequently sold by chemists and peddlers, they held much the same place as modern fancy handmade soaps do in providing a pretty luxury for the bathroom or dressing table. The most fancy washballs were often made using little cubes or pictures cut from one colour of soap embedded in soap of another tint. A wonderfully elaborate description is offered in Charles Lillie's 1740 recipe for Figured Wash-balls, which I offer in its entirety: |
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Figured Wash-Balls |
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Charles Lillie: The British Perfumer p288 (1740) |
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'These wash-balls, though troublesome to make, answer very well the ends proposed, viz, to surprise and please: they also may be made quite as good and fit for service as any other, even the best wash-balls. Proceed as follows:- |
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Take seventeen pounds of the best and whitest Genoa soap, shave it fine, and mix with it three pounds of the composition for camphor balls. Beat the whole into a fine even paste, with rose-water. |
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Now have ready four or five different colours, in powder, viz, a dark and a pale green, two reds, two blues, a yellow and a brown, Then divide the paste into as many parts as there are colours at hand; and beat and mix each very intimately with its separate colour, so that the several masses may have no streaks, spots or irregularities of hue, but may be entirely homogenous; in doing which, it is necessary to be very clean and nice. |
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When the coloured masses are pretty stiff, roll them out into cakes on a marble slab, to about a quarter of an inch thickness, then, with tin stamps, cut them out into the shapes of birds, beasts, sun, moon, stars, etc etc; always observing to match the colour of the paste to the form of the stamps; viz. the quadrupeds to be generally brown, the birds to be green, or otherwise as may be proper; the sun, golden yellow; and the moon and stars, very pale blue, approaching to white. |
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The stamps should never exceed half an inch in size. When each cake is entirely cut out, for the first time, the shapeless cuttings, or pieces may be again worked up separately, and rolled out and cut as before; and so on, until not a shred remains; or the cuttings may be preserved, for the ground-work or field of the wash-balls. |
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When all the figures have been properly formed, they are to be dried separately in the air, on sheets of paper, according to their colour; and then they are to be properly proportioned to the field or ground-work. For example, when the wash-ball is to be formed of birds and beasts, the ground-work (that is, the made-up remains of cuttings of the several coloured pastes) must be green; when suns are to be introduced, the field is to be a very pale sky-blue; and , when the moon and stars are intended to be shewn, the field should be a true sky blue, whilst the figures themselves are of a very pale blue colour. These colours, figures, and grounds, may be varied without end, according to the fancy and taste of the operator. |
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Remarks |
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The perfumes, the quantities of ingredients, manner of making up, and weight of balls, are exactly the same as for the best marbled wash-balls. Although, in the making of these, it will be impossible to be regular, some of the figures being broken, some whole, and all huddled together; yet, when the balls are old and properly shaved with a smooth brass knife (called a shaver), they will plainly shew the intended design; and even their irregularity will both please and surprise, in the same manner that people wonder at the existence of flies, and other insects, in pieces of amber.' |
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Editors Notes: |
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This amazingly modern sounding patterned soap could be attempted today with only minor substitutions on the grounds of safety. Small cutters are easily formed out of thin strip metal sold in hobby shops, and the soap could either be home made, or based on finely grated bought soap. With the variety of modern soaps available to us the use of a filler powder may be unnecessary, or experiments could be made with alternatives such as milk powder. |
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Contextual notes on the above text: |
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Composition for Camphor balls (p242) 'Take six pounds of very dry starch, and put to it eight pounds of very dry white lead: grind the whole in the starch mill, and sift it through a fine lawn sieve. Mix this compound well with fourteen pounds of very fine and good rice powder.' If one wanted to try this recipe today it would be possible to substitute a safe cosmetic colouring or even possibly talc for the white lead. The composition powders used in washballs provided dense colouring, a binding agent and in some cases medicinal or exfoliant ingredients. In this case, they provide filler and a dense background colour that could easily be substituted. |
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Powder colours known to have been used by Lillie include Carmine, Vermilion, Alkanet, Dutch Pink (actually a pale yellow made mostly of chalk), Yellow Ochre, Smalt, Indigo, White Lead and Ivory Black. Green was trickier and was produced either by blending yellow and blue or by drying and powdering green peach leaves. Of the above the problematic ones could be substituted for modern cosmetic pigments without altering the character of the recipe. |
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In brief, prepare shapes or cubes from soap in one colour, and finely grate the ground colour of soap. Layer grated soap and shapes in a tray, sprinkling each layer of shapes with a little perfumed water as you go. When all the ingredients are used up, the mixture is gently blended by hand until a slice cut through it shows an evenly marbled or patterned paste. Handfuls of the paste are moulded into balls which are allowed to dry slowly in the air. When they are hard, the outer layer is shaved off to even up the ball and reveal the decorative interior. |
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