It's time to wash this month of posts right out of our hair, and maybe even beautify ourselves a little too! This is a very old bottle of late 1800's Knowlton's Danderine Hair Cleanse and Scalp Tonic. Used for dandruff (the bottle even says it can aid with "falling hair" and hair growth), and the very faded box is highlighted on both sides with pictures of a Victorian woman and young girl, each with extremely long hair, visually adding to this claim. As great as the box design is, I freakin' love that tombstone-esque bottle face with the black label and cramped, shimmery gold lettering. The bottle itself still has a bit of solidified Danderine residue inside which has turned an amberish dark orange color. The ancient cork stopper has of course rotted away, though a bit of it is still stuck inside the opening. Invented in 1895, patented in 1909, one online source says this stuff was still available as late as 1922 via Montgomery Ward's catalogs.
5 comments:
9% alcohol in the prohibition era? People were drinking that. BTW, the box says "20%" and the bottle says "9%."
I love how fancy the lettering is on the bottle and I love the haughty lady with the enormous wad of hair. If I could get hair like that for 35 cents I'd certainly buy it!
It’s $.35 ya dingdong! To bad Danderine doesn’t work on eyesight— I’d hook you up!
A bottle with a label, and its original box, that is a rare thing for a bottle collector to own.
The images on the box remind me of the images shown in reproductions of Sears Roebuck Catalogs, which were somewhat prevalent cack in the 70's.
Yeah, the box really does look like its own catalog ad, JMR777. It's a good look! I'd love to see twenty or so products done like this--white box, black and white illustration, spot color accent--stacked up together. It would look like a page out of the newspaper.
I'm impressed that you managed to get the camera angles necessary to capture almost every word of that label, Karswell! I love the hand-lettered labels of Victoriana.
Photographing that label wasn’t easy, trust me!
Also agree with the catalog comment!
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