… that nail polish was invented by the Chinese about 5,000 years ago? But then again, wasn’t just about everything devised by the Chinese first? I recently discovered for instance, that the Chinese began printing 600 years before Johannes Gutenberg came up with the printing press in Germany. The Chinese also used a magnetic compass at leat 100 years before there was mention of the instrument anywhere else. And the list goes on and on.
But around 3000 B.C., long before the printing press and magnetic compass, the Chinese formulated something perhaps just as important - nail lacquer. The Chinese began coloring their fingernails by using a mixture of beeswax, gelatin and egg whites into which they added crushed flower petals for pigment. The preferred color, then as now, was a reddish/pinkish hue and was spread on long fingernails which were de riguer among the aristocracy because naturally, they symbolized leisure and privilege. That’s a portrait of the Cixi above, the last dowager empress of China, painted around 1900. The long fingernail tradition is kept alive by many Asian men today. Ever notice some cab drivers who sport a very long pinkie nail? Contrary to popular belief, the nail is not used to snort cocaine or to pick one’s nose. Rather, it demonstrates that the wearer does not perform manual labor. Driving a cab, after all, is not a back-breaking (though it may be an ache-inducing) task.
The Egyptians too opted for the reddish tones found in henna not just to color their fingernails, but the tips of their fingers as well. A dark red was the color of choice for the upper classes in Egypt. Both Queen Nefertiti and Queen Cleopatra are said to have used dark reds on their fingers and toes. Women of lesser rank were permitted only paler shades.
In China, nail color denoted social status as well. During the Chou Dynsaty, around 600 B.C., Chinese royalty sported gold and silver nails. Then, according to a 15th century Ming Dynasty manuscript, royal preferences seemd to have shifted back to red and also swung to black. Woe to the non-royals who dared to sport those hues, for execution was the prescribed punishment. I suppose it would be a wee bit of an understatement to conclude that fashion was not yet democratized.
At the beginning of the 19th century, women applied color by rubbing tinted oils into their nails and a century later, turned to tinted powders and creams to do the job. It is the automobile industry with its enameled paints which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, can be credited with the creation of nail polish as we know it as the polishes of today are basically refined versions of car paint.
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