Nail Polish

Nail polish or nail varnish is a lacquer that is applied to the nails of both the fingers and toes, usually cosmetically, but also as protection for the nails. The act of simply polishing the nails without applying a chemical layer afterwards is called nail buffing. more...

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History

The practice of adding color to nails appears to have begun with the Japanese and Italians around 3000 B.C. The Chinese used a colored lacquer, made from a combination of gum arabic, egg whites, gelatin and beeswax. They also used a mixture consisting of mashed rose, orchid and impatien petals combined with alum. This mixture, when applied to nails for a few hours or overnight, leaves a color ranging from pink to red. The Egyptians used reddish-brown stains derived from the henna plant to color their nails as well as the tips of their fingers. Today, some people still use henna dyes to draw intricate, temporary designs on their hands in a practice known as Mehndi.

During the Chou Dynasty of 600 B.C., Chinese royalty often chose gold and silver to enhance their nails. A fifteenth-century Ming manuscript cites red and black as the colors chosen by royalty for centuries previous. The Egyptians also used nail color to signify social order, with shades of red at the top. Queen Nefertiti, wife of the king Akhenaton, colored her finger and toe nails ruby red and Cleopatra favored a deep rust red. Women of lower rank who colored their nails were permitted only pale hues, and no woman dared to flaunt the color worn by the queen or king. Incas were known for decorating their fingernails with pictures of eagles.

It is unclear exactly how the practice of coloring nails progressed following these ancient beginnings. 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 painted. Even a century later, women still 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 women during this period painted their nails using a clear, glossy varnish applied with camel-hair brushes. When automobile paint was created around 1920, it inspired the introduction of colored nail enamels. Michelle Ménard is credited with inventing the beginnings of our modern day colored nail lacquers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org