Elizabethan Makeup Recipe

Apart from the colour of the skin, The Elizabethan idea of beauty was not very different from today’s fashionable look.

Pale skin – This was looked at as a sign of nobility and wealth and could be achieved by a number of ways.

• Staying out of the sun – While travelling or walking in the gardens during summer, noble women would wear oval masks of black velvet called “visards” to protect their faces from the sun.
• Being bled – to give themselves a washed out appearance and to take the colour out of their faces, women would be “bled” probably by leeches.
• Make-up – “Venetian Ceruse” or just ceruse was the most popular means to achieve a pale and smooth complexion. This consisted of a mixture of lead and vinegar. The first record of this skin-whitener was found in 1519 and by Elizabeth I’s reign was well established. However lead is a poisonous element when spread on your skin and was the cause of pitted, discoloured skin and hair loss. This probably lead to the belief that a high hairline or brow was a sign of nobility when it was actually a sign that they had smothered their skin in a poisonous concoction!
• Alum, tin ash and sulphur and talc
• Eggs – boiled egg white and other white materials were used and uncooked egg white was used as a glaze to keep other white ingredients on the face and to tighten the skin to hide wrinkles.
• Mother of pearl – mother of pearl and pearls were ground up to give a luminescence and shimmer.

Bright eyes –

• Belladonna – The name “belladonna” means beautiful lady. This practice began in Italy and the juice of this plant was dropped into women’s eyes to enlarge the pupils which is considered to be attractive and seductive. This plant is really poisonous, only 5 berries or 1 leaf is enough to kill a person and is not used cosmetically anymore as proonged useage caused blindness. The active ingredients in belladonna are atropine, hyoscine (scopolamine), and hyoscyamine, have anticholinergic properties.
• Eyeliner – kohl (powered antimony) was used to outline eyes to enhance their size and to make them appear more wide set and darken their eyelashes.

Red cheeks and lips –

• Face paint containing powdered madder root was applied to give a red glow to womens cheeks and is still available today although it is classed as an unsafe herb. . Expensive dyes made from cochineal was used to redden cheeks and lips. Cochineal is a dye obtained from a beetle. Cochineal insects produced carminic acid which was used to deter other insects. Carminic acid was mixed with aluminium to make the carmine dye.  
• Lipstick has been used for thousands of years since women and men crushed gemstones and applied them to their lips. The Elizabethan age made lipstick fashionable again after the middle ages when it was banned by the church. By this time it was made from beeswax and red stains from plants. Madder and cochineal were also used on the lips, which could also be reddened by using vermilion, a red pigment obtained from mercury sulphide. Lipstick today is made out of many ingredients. There are now organic types made of castor oil, beeswax and other various natural oils and it appears that the production of lipstick seems to have gone full circle.

Smooth complexion –

• Skin Care - All that makeup women (and men) used to achieve a white complexion, would often create all types of skin problems. To get rid of blemishes, wrinkles, spots and freckles the Elizabethans would use several methods: rosewater, lemon juice or mixture of eggshells, alum, mercury and honey. The wealthy would also bathe in ass’s milk while washing the face with mercury was also very popular. Mercury was also a common ingredient in skin care lotions to clear spots and wrinkles, however the mercury corroded the skin. Another method was to mix elder leaves, birch sap and sulphur which was left on the skin overnight and removed in the morning. Other forms of skin care ranged from urine to rain water to donkeys milk or wine.

Fair or red hair –

• A mixture of saffron, cumin seed, celandine and oil could be used to dye their hair a fashionable yellow or red.
• In the 1661 book Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art & Nature, various methods of coloring hair black, gold, green, red, yellow, and white are explained.

High brow –

• Hair was plucked or shaved from the hairline to give an aristocratic looking high forehead.

Copy of a picture showing an Elizabethan lady wearing a visard while travelling.