Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Assorted Flavour Fruit Teas

I don't drink tea. I don't even like fruit teas much and mint tea makes me feel fat. So I can only have bought this tin of teas because the tin itself is so fabulous. Perhaps you aren't very surprised?

So here, once upon a time, we had 40 sachets of fruit flavoured black tea. Cherry, Raspberry, Mango and Vanilla. Is vanilla a fruit? It looks like a french bean so I suppose it's just a seed pod.

Each of the four teas is illustrated by a botanical drawing style image showing flowers and fruit at the same time. Sadly we don't get a mango flower, perhaps because they don't look very interesting (check google and see what you think).

I think I have owned this tin since at least 1990. I'm sure I had it when I lived in that tiny basement flat not far from Harrods. Oh look. It says distributed 1988 on the base of the tin. Why didn't I check that before consulting my memory?

The base of the tin also reminds me that of course Crabtree & Evelyn of London is not a company based in London but in Woodstock Hill CT, USA. The tin came from England but the teas from China.

Wherever it all came from it's a very pretty tin don't you think?

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Tea Rose & Glycerine Soap

More Than Yesterday

Less than Tomorrow

For some reason the french text does not mention that this soap was heart-shaped.

I remember it well from 1975. A great big red heart.

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn English Country Soap Wild Thyme

I'm quite surprised I still have this little cotton bag in my mother's collection of soap packaging. Which is to say that it's a surprise I never chopped it up for my patchwork projects.

As recommended by the Gentry for the cleansing of FINE & DELICATE skins says the bag. It's rather fun don't you think?

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Sweet Fennel & Water Mint Soufflé

I remember this cream. It smelled wonderful!

I bought it back in the 1970s when I had such greasy skin (now styled oily because perhaps it sounds better - or less ghastly) that I really didn't need a moisturiser. I used to open the pot and just sniff the fabulous smell of this wonderfully light cream.

I'd like to say though, that having horribly greasy skin all those years ago was not such a bad thing in the long run. I don't have so many lines and wrinkles as I might have, and (according to my friends) look younger than I ought to for my age. Which is great.

It's a shame then, that nobody pointed out this important fact when I was in my teens. I could have done with that advice. It would have helped a lot.

So if by chance you are reading this aged about 17 and your skin is horribly oily - don't despair. Because when you get to my age you will look wonderfully youthful while your friends who currently have nice dry skin will look all crumbly and ancient: unless they spend a fortune on fancy skin creams and remember to use them every day. Don't forget your sunscreen though.

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.

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Rose Water & Glycerine Soap

Glycerine soap was all the crack in the early 1970s, and I see this is © 1973.

Another pretty packaging design from Crabtree & Evelyn.

Don't forget this was an American company masquerading as an English company.

Maybe English soap sounded glamorous in the 1970s?

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Eglantine Soap

As it's May we're having a selection of rose products. 

This Eglantine (wild rose or sweetbriar) was one of a series of fine English soaps scented after more fragrant roses of antiquity. It is deliciously light and airy, slightly fruity, with a hint of the apple-like scent of the leaves says the packaging.

This is Oberon's speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn South Sea Island Soaps Plumeria

This soap calls itself Plumeria. I would call it Frangipani. Which is just a lovely fragrance.

I learned to love it when I spent 6 months in Sydney. 

We had a heatwave and used to walk the dog at about 10 o'clock at night when it was almost cool.

There was a frangipani tree in a front garden which overhung the pavement. 

Oh bliss! I used to stop and drink in the fragrance.

It was worth taking a longer walk just to visit that tree

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Jojoba & Honey Soap

I think this must have been a set of three jojoba and honey soaps.

The individual boxes are about 2" square so each soap would be quite small.

The designs are a little bit odd: some of the bears look like real bears, and some of them are teddy bears. What's going on? And that girl having a picnic with her teddies doesn't look at all put out when are real bear turns up....

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Avocado Oil Soap

Another fabulous soap box from Crabtree & Evelyn.

What more is there to say?

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Lily Bath & Shower Gel

I bought this bath gel recently because I love Lily of the Valley.

It was only when I got home that I realised the illustration shows Lily of the Valley

but the product is called Lily.

The fragrance is in fact Lily of the Valley.

If you look very carefully you can just see part of the design is stamped into the cardboard.

Exotic packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Swiss Alpine Flowers and Glycerine Soap

Glycerine soap was really fashionable when my mother bought this packet.
Strange how the oddest things have their moments in the limelight. 

Exotic Packaging: Crabtree & Evelyn Tomato Soap

I remember this soap because not only is the packaging lovely, but the soap itself was tomato-shaped. Brilliant.