Tuesday 26th October
Ganders Goat Soap w/Hop, Sage & Birch
Coty Avocado Shaving Bowl (Vintage)
Mohawk 5-341 w/PurTech Synthetic 22mm
Ever-Ready 1914 (Late Model)
GEM by Personna (2) Shimmed
4711 Rose Cologne (as Aftershave)
Gosh! That was most peculiar ...
My vintage Coty Avocado Shaving Bowl arrived today and I just had to use it straight away. The plastic? gelatine? protective sleeve on the top of the soap had long lost its structure, making its removal long-winded and tedious but sustained effort with a pair of tweezers and I got there. From a test lather this morning, my goodness it pulls up a tremendous clotted cream lather in no time. That was test lathered in my hand; on the face, it literally stopped me in my tracks!
That could so easily be any good, modern artisinal soap.
When I first bagged this soap, I thought avocado was a peculiar ingredient for a soap from the 1950s - is it the scent, or an ingredient? Inside the lid is a little piece of writing that informs us that it is indeed using avocado oil as an ingredient! And, yes, on the face it feels like ... well, Wickham's 1912 for want of a better comparison.
On that, there may be some reverse sense to what I'm saying there as there is some mythology that Wickham's 1912 is based on an old shaving soap recipe. I was sceptical of that as Wickham's 1912 has oils such as avocado in ... and surely they didn't use those in vintage soap. Well, it seems that they did!
I found this interesting article which points at Coty being the first cosmetics company to use avocado oil and that goes back to the early 1930s with the first use in a shaving soap towards the end of the 1930s. Fascinating!
In 1905, Francois founded Coty S.A. in Paris and the following year he established a retail outlet at 23 Place Vendome directly across the road from Rene Lalique
www.cosmeticsandskin.com
It's a seriously good soap and to me, the beholder, really the best of both worlds as it embodies the best of the modern artisinal with vintage, which is vintage ... so it's good, whatever < tongue in cheek.
The rest of the kit was lovely - my gorgeous reknotted Mohawk brush with what I'm calling "High Mountain" fibre was so soft, pulling up that gorgeous clotted cream lather; the late model 1914 and a good splash of (women's) 4711 Rose Cologne as aftershave. Lovely job! Lovely job all round.
