TOILET BOXES AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 19, 24 January 1929, Page 15

TOILET BOXES AGAIN

A POPULAR REVIVAL

The: farthingaled and beruffod dames of the days of "Good Queen ■Bess" were wont to keep their complexion pastes and simples, and little phials of this and that strange concoction- warranted to produce .youth and.beauty, in handsome caskets in their tiring rooms, says an English exchange. These were treasured possessions, worthy of the rare and expensive perfumes and lotions kept locked within. Some of them, to be seen nowadays in- museum cases, are covered with exquisite embroidery; others are wonderful examples of the Renaissance carvers' and jewellers' art. * • . ■ . " There has been a popular revival lately in the use of ornamental caskets. Gaily decorated and richly ornate boxes, utilised for cigarettes, playingcards, and bridge-markers, correspondence, as well as trinkets, handkerchiefs, gloves, and other oddments, are seen on all tho tables in tho smart woman's rooms. Finally, following the modern tendency to keep dressing-table top clear of all encumbrances which collect dust, milady sets upon it a beautiful toilet casket, and, after the custom of her long-past ancestresses, keeps inside her dainty pots of face cream, powders, lip-sticks, and so forth, for daily use. Another box holds shingle brushes, comb, and manicure instruments. Tho boxes are often facsimiles of antique pieces; carved and gilded; jewelled and painted with strange devices^ Those of more modern tendency are gorgeously lacquered. A quaint, oldfashioned print is sometimes stuck on the lid, and the rest of the box is decorated in keeping. A coat of yellow varnish gives it the necessary antique look. Some have mirrors set inside the lids. . The formidable latch ■ and key, which were once deemed important, are scarcely so now. Many of the box lids fasten merely with a gold or silken cord loop over a pretty button. Plain wooden boxes, made of white wood suitable for lacquering, are purchasable in the turnery department of any store; or one can manufacture a very fair imitation of an antique casket by covering any suitable box which has a hinged lid with furniture' brocade or tapestry of effective pattern, finishing edges with cord or galon.