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!

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.  

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;

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!

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!

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).

The Good 80s

Hurrah for Hoarding!

This may come as a shock to you, but the internet hasn't always been around.  I know, imagine!   Magazines used to be my number one path to inspiration, though they often fell short of my expectation, or alternatively, exceeded my ability to be 'cool'.   I kept most of my magazines, not being one to throw away ANYTHING, so I am pleased to be able to present a few images of the covers of an early 1980s magazine called Stiletto.  It was large format, had coloured covers but newsprint within, and it covered off on a wide variety of fashion, music and popular culture, with an inevitable focus on the Melbourne and Sydney scenes.

I remember reading through them (and this was one of the magazines I thought I couldn't quite live up to) and marveling at these strange types who dressed however they wanted and lived their entire lives in glittering nightclubs and bars.  I'm sure the reality was quite different, but they had an impact on me nonetheless.

Now I look at these magazines with nostalgia, but also, I can look at the covers afresh and note how imaginative they are.  I love the collage, the photocopied graininess, the hand-coloured detailing, strident patterns and limited colour palette.  There's no shoulder-padded corporate power-walking here, just good fresh design working within the restraints of budget and technology.   

 

 

 

 

Leaving all that aside, I MUST do a spread on the fashions within - everyone needs to know how to wear a sack well!

The New Melancholy

Autumn, Aspire and Annuals

I know it is stating the obvious, but autumn is here.  It seems to be a bit early, the leaves are well under way to their new colours, there are dahlias out, it smells smokey at night, it's cooler and now, daylight savings is over.  As much as I really don't like (I'm being mild here) the very hot weather, it is sad to see the summer go.  Sad in a melancholy way.  

But I love the small rituals of a change of season.  The decision to pack away the linen and pastel coloured argyle socks, switching from rose scented tea to chai, dusting off the Balmoral boots, raking leaves, ordering violets and looking through bulb catalogues, moving from citrus and herbal scents to woods and resins.   They are small and personal things - I'm certainly not a 'no white shoes after labor day' type of person - but each one is a rediscovery of things forgotten (if only for 6 months), and an anticipation of cool days ahead, rugged up and cosy.

Here's a flower.  A dahlia from our garden, no less, and I see we aren't the only ones keen to have a piece of this:

I was very proud during the week to have picked up a copy of Aspire Magazine, a free publication circulated at various venues around Adelaide, because I am in it!   Well, it wasn't about me in my gracious living room (a la "Hello" magazine), but there was a small article about Shanghai Lil & The Scarlet Fez soaps!  I was very happy about it and I'm chuffed to be in this new, very smart, magazine.   Here's the article, but I recommend reading the whole magazine, of course!

And finally, I am at the Wattle Street market in Fullarton on 12 April 2014, and Pop up at Prospect (Prospect Road) on 26 April 2014.   Come by and say hello and smell the soaps, bath salts, room sprays and perfumes I have on offer!

1960s Colour Inspiration

Capri, by Crown Lynn

We recently acquired a set of Crown Lynn crockery in the Capri range.   Made in New Zealand, Crown Lynn was the largest manufacturer of pottery in the Southern Hemisphere up to the late 1970s, and the "Colourglaze" range was one of the most popular styles.  The "Colourglaze" range was also sold under the names "Capri", "South Pacific" and "Caribbean Ware". 

The range of colours is inspiring, with names like Pumpkin, Jade, Tropic, Duck Egg, Oyster, Clover, Ant Green, Coral, Cocoa, Citrus, Honey and Mushroom.   Apparently, there are many other colours too, so my inner collector (not so inner, really) is all fired up!  Here are some snaps:

 

 

Vintage Perfume Ingredient Catalogue

Junk shop find

(Extracts from 'Perfumes', a catalogue published by the Societe Chimique des Usines du Rhone, probably in the early 1920s.  From my private collection.)
 
I love reading the 'Perfumes' catalogue.   It contains a descriptive list of a wide range of synthetic perfumes, their benefits over natural essential oils (usually cost and potency), a few recipes for perfumes and a series of photographs of the factories that produced the chemicals.   It's full of possibilities!

I've been thinking for some time about making my own perfumes.   I am ambivalent about synthetic perfumes like the ones listed in the catalogue.  On the one hand, I would prefer to avoid the use of synthetic chemicals as I generally prefer keeping things as natural as possible.  I certainly stick to natural ingredients in the soaps I make. But I'm also aware of the advantages of using alternatives to natural products, particularly where there might be a dwindling or limited supply (like rosewood essential oil). 

I've tried researching various essential oils to check whether the production of the oils are in any way  detrimental to either the environment or the people who live near the resource.  The more expensive oils seem to be obtained from specifically grown crops.  Otherwise, it might be wise if I'm concerned about a particular oil to at least try to source an organic version, or one that is locally produced.

In any event, I still find the catalogue inspiring; it's like looking in a well illustrated cook book that makes you rush out and buy far too many vegetables.  And here's something else I find inspiring - a Holga pic of begonias in glorious late summer colours:

 

As a second thought, below is an extract from 'Perfume' of a perfume recipe for 'Bouquet of Moss Rose':

Firstly, you need to make 'rose spirit' as follows;

"Grain spirit of 94% strength without odour or flavour is reduced to 70% strength by adding Rose water, and then dissolving Rhodinol in this alcohol in the following proportions:

Rhodinol I   20gr

Alcohol 70% 1 litre."

This is the 'rose spirit'.  So, the recipe is:

"Rose Spirit.....................660cc
Extract of Orange flowers....240cc
Tincture of Ambergris........30cc
Tincture of Musk..............25cc
Tincture of Vanilla.............45cc

These ingredients are mixed, shaken and left for 15 days in a well closed bottle at a temperature of 25 degrees to 30 degrees C; it is then allowed to cool, filtered and put into bottles for sale."

I am pleased to say that Shanghai Lil and The Scarlet Fez perfumes will be all-natural and vegan!

1940s Interiors

A photo survey

There are so many wonderful image collections out there, on flickr, pintrest and the like, but it is surprisingly difficult to come across images of interiors from the 1940s.

My interest in 1940s interiors is a personal one, that is, I'm looking for inspiration for our home, so I have put together a short(ish) collection of scanned images from some of our books and magazines, which I think is worth sharing here.  This selection follows on from an earlier post on 1940s fabrics.

The images are mostly of fairly modest homes, a reasonable starting point since we're not likely to be in a position to furnish our home with Andre Arbus anytime soon (which reminds me, I need to speak to those lotto people about this on-going issue...) and I have selected them because each one has a particular feature or finish that interests me.

And why the 1940s?  Well, it's hard to pinpoint, but I'm very fond of art deco, streamline moderne and post-war modernism and the 1940s is the in-between point of these styles.  It's a place where there is a way to blend the otherwise very distinctive and opposing styles spanning either side of the second world war, and that's great for me and my partner and our eclectic tastes.  So, here we are:

1. Textiles: Stroheim & Romann. Ceramics: Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Co. Ltd.  From 'Furnishing the Small Home' - Margaret Merivale (1945).
2. Fireplace treatment. Designer: W. Curtis Green R.A. ibid
3. Room detail. Joseph Aronson. ibid.
4. Studio room by Helen Park. ibid.
5. Room detail.  Oliver Hill. ibid.
6. Dining room, Bowman's Ltd, London.  From 'Design in Every Day Things' - Australian Broadcasting Commission (1941).
7. Hand woven woollen materials by Catherine Hardess of Melbourne. ibid. 
8. Living room of Miss Patricia Detring, Bel Air. Designer: Paul T. Frankl Associates.  From 'The Studio Year Book.  Decorative Art 1943-1948' - ed. Rathbone Holme & Kathleen M. Frost.
9. Scale model of living room.  Designer: Edward D. Stone. ibid. 
10. Japanese pavilion, World's Fair, Paris 1937.  Designer: Junzo Sakakura.  From 'Furniture & Interiors of the 1940s' - Anne Bony (2002).
11. Shangri-La Hotel 1939-1940.  Photographer: Julius Schulman. ibid.