A night out on the town in the 1940s and 1950s.

Bars, nightclubs, restaurants and cafes.

Getting a bit tired of the rustic wood and exposed light-bulbs in bars around your town?  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just have a look at this small selection of nightspots from the 1940s and 1950s.  Sure, half of them wouldn't have let the likes of me through their doors but I'm sure anyone going to one of these places was up for a good time!  

Happy New Year to all!

The Blue Room at the Chi Chi, Palm Springs, 1950s. From Palm Springs Holiday, Peter Moruzzi.

Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, 1950s.  From Impact of Design, Clive Carney.

Les Ambassadeurs at The Diplomat Hotel, Hollywood, Florida, 1950s. From Designing a Good Life, Norman M. Giller and Sarah Giller Nelson.

The TV Room at Driftwood Motel, Sunny Isles, Florida, 1950s. As above.

Riviera Resort Hotel, Palm Springs, 1950s. From Palm Springs Holiday, Peter Moruzzi.

Del Tahquitz Hotel, Palm Springs, 1940s. As above.

Ocotillo Lodge, Palm Springs, 1950s. From The Alexanders, a Desert Legacy, James R. Harlan.

The Latin Quarter, Sydney, 1950s. From Impact of Design, Clive Carney.

Richlor's, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, 1940s. From The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister, Chris Nichols.

Tropicana Night Club, Havana, Cuba, 1950s. From Havana Before Castro, Peter Moruzzi.

From Paris to Juan les Pins

Voila!

On a recent trip to my parent's house, I was digging around in their cupboards and I came across a crumpled old brown paper bag.  Crumpled old brown paper bags are like a red rag to a bull to me, so I zeroed in on this to find out what was within.  This is what I found:

The Patheorama is a 35mm film viewer.  You load the film across the viewing window, close the lid, hold it up to your eye and wind the film manually using a wheel located on the backside of the viewer.   The images appear through the window one at a time, black and white but tinted.  The films are all French, one of Paris, another of Norway, Switzerland, a cartoon and the Riviera.  

I don't recall seeing this device when I was young, which might have been a good thing as the old film is very delicate and brittle.  The images are murky through the scratched lens, faded and elusive.  I love them!  Here are some delicately coloured scenes of Paris and the Riviera, near Antibes and Villefranche, I think:

 

I asked my mother about the viewer and she told me that her father had been given it by a friend who had returned from the continent during the first world war.  It makes me happy to think that I can still rummage around in my parents cupboards and find new treasures, just like I did when I was a kid!

Post Market Post

The Human Snail

Here is a picture of me working at my blog:

Well, it's not really, it's a snail, photographed by an amateur photographer in the 1930s.  A recent addition to my collection of snaps.  I have been working quite hard recently, in preparation for two markets over the weekend just gone.  The fall-out of this is I have been slow to post to my blog! 

One of the products I launched over the weekend is the gift pack.  Not just any gift pack, but a party in a box:

 
Karena from Magic Jelly prepared the beautiful labels and patterns, of course, and each gift box is different, containing a variety of Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez products.  Some even have Magic Jelly buttons, coasters or mirrors!   They were well received over the weekend and I plan to have more ready for the next round of markets before Christmas. I hope to be able to offer some via the online shop too, so more on that later. 

I have had a couple of enquiries from people asking where I will be next.  There are a couple of simple ways to find out:

1. sign up to my monthly newsletter - I will tell you about the markets for the following month, any special offers and any other news relating the Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez;

2. follow me on Facebook.com/ScarletFez;

3. visit me at a market and ask me!

When in Rome

What Soap to Make?

A long weekend, gorgeous and sunny weather, what soap should I make today?

From the cover of "The New Target Book for Girls"

It had to be When in Rome, of course!  That fresh and aromatic scent of basil and spearmint is perfect for this balmy weather.  Made with olive oil, shea oil and meadowfoam seed oil, When in Rome is a wonderful skin conditioning soap with a creamy lather and looks smart with its blue and black swirls.  

I have just made another batch today, but I do have some When in Rome in stock in the online store.  

A Brief Holiday

Royal Adelaide Show

Another extravaganza!

Part of our spring ritual is to visit the Royal Adelaide Show.  When we went yesterday, it was a beautiful clear day, very crowded and full of things to see.  

We always visit the floral displays, the crafts, the baking, the birds and the Grand Parade.  We always buy a freshly squeezed orange juice, buy daffodils from Hancock's and have tea at the CWA cafe.  I look forward to these simple pleasures every year.

This year, it was the 175th anniversary of the Royal Adelaide Show, something I had to think twice about - 175 years?! 

The bonus this year was a stage show put on in the Goyder Pavilion.   "175 Years of Fashion" promised to be an interesting display of costumes from those years, a fashion parade, or so we thought.  It proved to be a dazzlingly camp dance extravaganza of dubious historical accuracy.  The routines, gymnastics and glitter more than made up for the lapses in detail and the show was well received by the audience of city and country folk who crowded around the stage.

I highly recommend a visit.  The show has a rare connection with the past and is a wonderful opportunity to indulge in nostalgia and to eat lots of sugary food.  I even love the promotional campaign for the show this year.  It has collage, old photographs and flowers - of course I love it!   Here it is;

Rosehip and Pomegranate Face Serum

A New Product

The last couple of weeks have been very busy as Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez prepared for a market and the release of a range of new skin-care products.  

I have had an excellent cleansing face soap out for some time now - the unscented Pink Moon Face Soap.  Then, the Rose and Cucumber Face Mist, a soothing and fresh toner for the face.  Rosehip and Pomegranate Face Serum completes the range.   This oil is made from organic rosehip oil and is blended with pomegranate oil, camellia oil, meadowfoam seed oil, olive squalene and vitamin E.  

You only need 3 or 4 drops of Rosehip and Pomegranate Face Serum, gently massaged over your face and neck after toning.   It is a relatively 'dry' oil, so will sink in quickly and is, therefore, suitable for use under make-up.  It suits normal to dry skin.   What I like about the serum is that it is made with only the ingredients I want to use on my skin, no padding, extending or emulsifying with water.  Just simple oils with all of their nutrients and benefits in a small bottle.  Good things come in small packages, right?  (I sound like Mary Ann Singleton from Tales of the City!)

I have made up a small face-care kit with all three of the above products, which are available from my stall at any market I will be at.  You can also buy each separately, of course!  Sign up to my newsletter (the button is in the sidebar) for up-to-date news of where I will be, special offers and new products.

New Product Launch

Rose and Cucumber Face Mist

I have been working for the last few months on a couple of new products, the first of which I am proud to say is released today!  

Rose and Cucumber Face Mist is an excellent toner and can also be used on the face just to refresh the skin.  Made from gentle rose water and soothing cucumber water, this face mist is blended with hydrolised oats.  One of my favourite ingredients, hydrolised oats instantly sooth the skin, making it look and feel soft.  

You will note, of course, that this product is completely natural, vegan and is not tested on animals.  The labels have been beautifully designed by Karena at Magic Jelly.

Rose and Cucumber Face Mist is the perfect accompaniment to Pink Moon conditioning face soap and will shortly be joined by another new product, a face serum.  More on that later.  

If you are interested in trying Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez's Rose and Cucumber Face Mist, come and say hello this Saturday at That Dapper Market at Bowden. 

Adelaide Matters

Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez in the Spotlight

The latest edition (August 2014) of Adelaide Matters has a small article about me.  It certainly feels odd being in print, but it was very nice of them to feature me.   Here is the article:

Smooth as Velvet

Velvet Cream soap

This all-natural, vegan soap, made without palm oil, is as mellow as a balloon of brandy.  With the chocolate/vanilla/almond-like scent of tolu balsam, and its creamy, rich lather, it's a luxury worthy of any lounge lizard, cove, vamp or sophisticate.  Velvet Cream is made with a blend of rich oils including olive oil, olive pomace, cocoa butter and mango butter.  Available now through the Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez store.

Join the Club

Keeping up to date with Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez news

If you have been following Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez's blog (of course you have!), you will have noticed a change in the way it looks.  Take a look to the right:

Karena from Magic Jelly has created these fantastic buttons in the sidebar, all designed to lure you into the world of soap!  I must say, I love them, and I keep clicking on them for fun, they look so good.  Perhaps I should keep that to myself. 

You will have noticed that one of the buttons is for you to subscribe to a new newsletter that I will be releasing in the next week or so.  The newsletter will have news on upcoming markets and other events of interest, new product arrivals, special offers for subscribers and most importantly, fun!

You can also subscribe to this blog - there is a mini form just under the buttons for that.  If you subscribe to the blog, you will receive an email alerting you to new posts.  

Also, Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez is now on Instagram!  You can find me at #shanghaililandthescarletfez.  The photos I will post here will be different to the content of this blog and Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez's facebook page, but will focus on soap, what inspires me, more soap and anything else that captures my fancy.  Join up and welcome aboard!

Nightshade

Heady and exotic

I love making perfume, it's something that brings me a lot of peace.  I experiment as much as I can with the natural essential oils that I have and every now and then I come across a blend which I think is successful.

Of course, it is all subjective, what is strange and compelling to me might be repellant to another, but I don't mind that.

When I put together the Nightshade blend, I knew instantly that this was one of the successful ones.  It smoothly combined a number of elements, elevated the scents I wanted to feature and produced an evocative perfume that I'm proud to have made.

Not for everyone, Nightshade is heady.  It's a late summer's night in Acapulco, a midnight tryst in a winter hothouse or it's the lingering memory of the first time you saw your love.  Nightshade is blended to highlight that most beautiful and exotic of scents, tuberose, with a supporting caste of cocoa and black pepper.  

Nightshade takes its place with One Fine Summer and Sleepy Lagoon in the current range of Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez's all-natural, vegan eau de parfums.  

New Product Photos!

Merging Interests

I have long collected vintage photographs and I was keen to incorporate them into the Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez fold.  My friend Karena from Magic Jelly has kindly shared with me some of her vast knowledge of digital graphic programs to enable me to use some of my collection of photographs to promote my soaps.  With the keen eye of my partner, I have put together some images, which you will now find on my product listings at the store.  I am very pleased with the results and thank Karena and Stevie for their help!

Winterfield

A new soap

I have just released a new soap, Winterfield.   I love coming up with new soap ingredient or essential oil combinations and with this soap, I chose to go for a classic Mediterranean scent, lavender and rosemary.  As I was releasing the soap in winter, I wanted it to have a 'comforting' feel, so I used extra rich and creamy oils including avocado, apricot kernel and hemp seed oils, to achieve a lovely smooth lather - perfect to counter the drying effects of a hot shower.   Winterfield is gently coloured with green clay.

So, please feel free to visit the store to purchase some Winterfield of your own.  Otherwise, you can follow my Facebook page (you may wish to select the setting to receive all of my notifications as otherwise you may find Facebook is something of a brat, not liking to share everything it should) to keep up to date with which markets I'll be at and when.

Prints and Prints

Escaping from work

I noticed that the Flinders University Art Museum and City Gallery is now located in the State Library of South Australia, so I went to visit it during the week to see what was on offer.

Currently on show is an exhibition of South Australian political prints from the 1970s and 1980s called "Mother Nature is a Lesbian".   The period covered now seems like a golden age for South Australia, what with Don Dunstan and a healthy and visible culture of protesting for change.  Maybe I'm looking back through rose-coloured glasses, but there's something very appealing about those years from where I stand.

I loved the energy in the posters on display, all pre-digital era of course, and I snapped a couple of my favourites below.   I highly recommend a visit to this very conveniently located gallery.  The exhibition closes on 13 July 2014.

 

Pamela Harris, 'Memory Trace' 1983, serigraph.

Pamela Harris, 'Women' 1984, serigraph.

Ann Newmarch, 'Nationalize the Car Industry' C1975, serigraph.

Mandy Martin 'But for the 750,000 people in the world who depend on 

General Motors for their daily bread' 1975, serigraph.

Mandy Martin, 'Gallery 2' 1977, serigraph. 

Also at the State Library of South Australia is a small exhibition of photographs and photographic equipment called "Moriendo Renascor: 19th Century Photography".  I would love to see more from the library's collection and I understand that the public may browse its collection.   This exhibition closes 31 July 2014. 

A modern print of a C1850 daguerreotype 'Actors', photographer unknown.

The photo above is an extract of a modern print of (I think) a glass plate negative C1879 showing the studios of an Adelaide based photographer, Captain Sweet, on Flinders Street.   

Of course, the name Captain Sweet alone is enough to pique anyone's interest, but what little I have seen of this photographer's work makes me want to learn a lot more!  I understand he photographed a lot of landscapes, but it is his portraits that caught my eye.  I have one in my own collection which is one of my favourites, a gentleman in dark glasses.   The subject is interesting, of course, because it is unusual to have a sitter wearing dark glasses, perhaps he is vision impaired, or perhaps it's a trick of the light turning his standard reading glasses dark.  I don't know.  But it is also the space, the jaunty position of the sitter and the quiet simplicity that I love.  

Nightshade

A new perfume by Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez

I am pleased to release a new fragrance, Nightshade, which will debut at That Dapper Market this coming Saturday.  Nightshade is a beautifully rich and mysterious blend of essential oils, absolutes and resins but the shining stars in this all-natural, vegan fragrance are cocoa and tuberose.  It is heady and would be described as an 'oriental' with a fine sillage and good staying power.  Just in time for winter.

It is always difficult to describe a fragrance, but I can tell you my thoughts on this one.   The floral notes are intense and suggest hot-house rather than meadow.  It is tropical, but out of season, like an orchid delivered in a white box full of tissue in the dead of winter.  It is other-worldly - a visitor from far away, sophisticated and alluring.  The cocoa and the resins underlying the floral notes bring warmth and softness, which is the reason why I think Nightshade is more of a cooler season fragrance than one for a summer release.

Come and sample Nightshade at That Dapper Market and say hello!

Creative Types

Home Sewing

I was recently commissioned to make a batch of sample soaps for an Adelaide based fabric and sewing supply store called The Drapery.  The soap I made was The Emperor's Chai, and I packaged these in small brown envelopes and added labels designed by my friend Karena at Magic Jelly - more on Karena later.  The soaps will be given away to The Drapery customers so if you are after a natural, sustainable fabric or some indie designer patterns or books, then I recommend giving The Drapery a look.  

Talking to the lovely ladies from The Drapery about the amount of people out there taking up, re-visiting or continuing home sewing is inspiring.  I was reminded of the recent trip my partner and I made to Melbourne where we caught up with our friends and where we got to talking about blogs.  It transpires that our friend has a blog called Needle & Spindle in which she talks eloquently about her love of knitting, crocheting and spinning.  I marvel at our friend's talent and passion!  I have since been eyeing up balls of wall thinking, yes, maybe I can start learning that mysterious (to me!) art of knitting and this was largely driven by my sighting of this brilliant winter hat on Needle & Spindle:

And if that hat isn't enough, guess what it is called?  A Pineapple Stack hat!  I love it!  Our friend designed the distinctive pineapple stitch and offers the pattern for sale via Ravelry.  This hat has even won awards!  I'd like mine beany-style, with a fold-up and pompom.  Yes. 

And back to Karena, she has taken up sewing again with her usual vigour.  She applies the same meticulous attention to detail to her sewing as she does to her art and design.  But Karena has taken this all one step further (of course!) by designing her own fabrics!   What?! you say?  I know, who designs their own fabrics?  Well, take a look at these beauties:

I absolutely love the moths of course, but look, the lillies are brilliant too.  You can purchase these fabrics for yourself through Magic Jelly's shop at Spoonflower.   I have seen the fabrics printed and they look fantastic!  Available in a range of beautiful fabrics including a whole lot of natural fibres - combed cotton, cotton poplin, cotton voile, linen cotton canvas, organic cotton knit, organic cotton sateen, heavy cotton twill or silk crepe de Chine.

Making things is great fun, and I'm lucky to know so many talented creative types.

A Brief Holiday

Through the grainy, hyper-coloured lens of Harinezumi

My partner and I have just returned from a short holiday to Melbourne.   We drove along the Great Ocean Road, which has to be one of the world's great coastal drives, and I took along my bag of cameras, including the Harinezumi.  This little toy digital camera has a number of effects but they all come out looking roughly like a super 8 film, faded or saturated with time. 

 

We arrived in Melbourne via Geelong.  I hadn't been to Geelong before, and I loved it.  It had a lot of great domestic architecture and was very atmospheric.  I felt the past, being in Geelong.  Of particular note was the Eastern Beach precinct.   It was a dream for nostalgics, with sweeping lawns, a brilliant blue paddling pool, handsome red brick kiosks, brightly coloured picnic seating and, best of all, a whimsical fountain of joy!   The fountain itself was wonderful to look at, with lots of shells and stylised dolphins, but surrounding these were four large water birds standing on turtles!

 

We also visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art.  There was a wonderful exhibition of work by Emily Floyd called "Far Rainbow".  The exhibition was made up of a number of different media; prints, wood sculptures, a slide show, even grass matting!  I thought it captured an idyllic early 1970s feel with its primary colours and wooden toy-like shapes.  Of course, there is a more substantial reading of the work, but you can find this out for yourself here!  The two snaps below were taken at the exhibition (no flash, of course).