Do You Have A Nail Polish That You Prefer Above All The Others?
>> Saturday, October 26, 2013
It has been stated that the concept of manicures actually were developed in India thousands of years ago as women used henna as nail paint. The definition of henna according to the dictionary is a dye implemented to color the hair and decorate the body that is derived from powdered leaves of a tropical shrub. Most of us are familiar with henna that is still in use today so it seems to make sense that it was part of the manicure in ancient times. This practice spread around the world and was adopted by various cultures of people who put their own twist on the practice and developed different matte nail polish formulas to achieve the desired results.
The perfect manicure was accomplished using solid gold by the people of Babylonia. It was the Chinese who concluded that social rank and wealth should be indicated with nail color. A strange combination of egg whites beeswax, gelatin and gum Arabic is what was used to make their formula of a glue like paint. In order to create different hues they used flower petals from plants such as impatiens, orchid and roses. The actual procedure required soaking the nails in this mixture for many hours. Gold and silver dust was used to create colors displayed by the royalty, with precious stones inlaid on the nail.
the color red to indicate societal hierarchy. It was determined that the strength of the shade of red reflected an individual's amount of power that they possessed. They also used henna and even occasionally blood to create the desired hue. It has been stated that Cleopatra preferred a crimson shade, and the women of lower rank were only permitted to use pale colors because red was only allowed to be used by royalty.
Images of eagles were used to embellish the fingertips of the Inca's who were credited for developing nail art using a symbol that was used on their architecture as well. Jumping ahead to the 1920 era, a French makeup artist who loved the high-gloss paint that was used on automobiles had a brilliant idea to adapt those car paints into a formula that she developed which could be used on fingernails as a glossy lacquer that is the nail polish familiar to us today.
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