Exotic Packaging: Caswell-Massey Orchard Soap Plum

This is another of the soaps I bought for my mother in New York City in late autumn 1993.
Lovely soaps, wonderfully wrapped in richly coloured tissue paper inside beautifully designed boxes.

Caswell-Massey were the oldest chemists and perfumers in America, established in 1752. Amazing! I remember it was a wonderful shop and I am delighted to report the company is still going strong. Although nothing on their website today is quite as lovely to look at as this packaging... but you can't smell the products online can you? Well, perhaps I should take myself off to Fortnum & Mason because apparently you can buy their products there. OK.

Exotic Packaging: Applewoods of Devon Ltd Brambly Hedge Fine Soap Primrose

I can't help feeling that someone bought this primrose soap simply because the box was so pretty. And Brambly Hedge was an utterly charming series of (I think) four books, one for each season. Subsequently Brambly Hedge went on to take over the world of novelty plates and probably calendars and stuff. And, as you see, soap.

And here's another wonderful image from the talented Jill Barklem who created Brambly Hedge. I just love all the details. No wonder I remember the soap box, but not the soap itself!

Exotic Packaging: An Original Formula Bluebell & Mistletoe Soap

It's great that one of these An Original Formula soap boxes has a date on it: 1983. So long ago!

I remember An Original Formula products (for No:7 at Boots) very well. They were always beautifully designed and the brand was all about using natural ingredients.

Exotic Packaging: Scottish Fine Soaps Ltd Wood Hyacinth

I'm not mad about the brown packaging here but this little image of bluebells or wood hyacinths is charming; there's a lot of detail you won't notice unless you peer at it quite hard.

Exotic Packaging: Bluebell Guest Soaps

I have no idea who made this little box of guest soaps. You might say that it must have been a French company but many soaps, face creams and cosmetics are labelled in French as Paris is universally seen as the capital of the beauty/perfume industry.

So a mystery maker but rather a charming design.

Exotic Packaging: Somerfield Melon & Avocado Glycerine Soap

Interesting looking own brand soap from Somerfield.
An unusual flavour... or fragrance I suppose, and a simple but arresting packaging design.
Swanky use of typeface too. Very nice.

Exotic packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Avocado Foaming Bath Gel

I don't remember this Avocado Foaming Bath Gel at all but it sounds rather good. My mother wasn't much of a one for bath gels, or bubbles in her bath either. She was more likely to go for old fashioned bath salts. So I'm guessing this was probably mine. Perhaps a Christmas present from Mummy with a view to keeping the pretty packaging herself? That sounds about right.

A Little Bit of Chocolate Does You Good: Cailler Sublim Noir Truffon

Classy dark chocolate from Cailler of Switzerland

Paper Bag: Penhaligons

What a lovely bag. 

Beautifully textured thick paper with handsome gold lettering and a golden cord.

Very nice indeed.

You can see that Penhaligon's can announce itself by appointment to both 

the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Edinburgh. I wonder what they buy?

Exotic Packaging: Thomas J Fudge's Florentines

The Chef is very fond of florentines so I buy some for him now and then as a treat. Thomas J Fudge make several kinds of florentines approved by the Chef, and the packaging is rather wonderful don't you think?

Exotic Packaging: National Galleries of Scotland

The National Galleries of Scotland own a beautiful painting of a skater by Sir Henry Raeburn  and they use the image (or used to) on their paper bags and tissue paper.

This little bag and the tissue paper show a silhouette of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch. Click on the link above to find out more. 

It's a lovely picture of a man skating on what looks like a nasty cold day. And yet he doesn't seem to have wrapped up much. I guess in 1700 something people didn't have central heating so did not feel the need to wrap up so much when they left the house.

I had to tape the tissue paper to the window in order to photograph it. 

The design is white on white. Very chic. But you can't scan it.

A friend came back from Edinburgh years ago with a bunch of souvenirs and she gave me this paper. 

I've been using it to wrap my Christmas decorations ever since. 

When was that? Goodness... at least 15 years ago I think, maybe more.