The picture above is a Pears soap Victorian lady sat
on a gate holding an apple.
I looked at the Bixby eye in the gallery on my mobile phone and it took me to Etsy saying there was a similar one on that site for sale for 170 Euros but it is no longer available.
Our framed poster is from around 1886 and was probably displayed where people gathered on buses, the Underground, music halls and shops? Do you know anything about Pears soap advert posters?
I believe the adverts were for toilet soap and the people who bought were middle class. Not ordinary folk like myself who used Carbolic soap.
I won't be selling it and it's hung on a nail and it's replaced a modern picture that will be hopefully sold at a carboot sale this summer.
There's a lot of cheap print copies but it's nice to have one your great grandmother probably looked at.
Pears toilet soap was aimed at the middle class market not scruffy smallholders and polytunnel owners like yourself.
I will write ✍️ another post about another poster find another time.
Have you found any treasures in a charity shop or carboot sale?
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I can't remember which soap my parents bought but it certainly wasn't Pears. Too posh for us oiks!
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get Pears soap either JayCee. The girl in the picture looks so elegant and beautiful. People scrubbed up well way back when.
ReplyDeletei don't usually buy pears soap but bought some on a whim before christmas and put it out for use on christmas eve - it's still going strong and it will still be going strong for another month or more and it's not gone mushy so i think although more expensive than supermarket soap i usually buy there's no waste, it lasts much longer and is more pleasant to use -i'm a convert, probably only need 2 bars for years use! 3 adult household and we're good at washing our hands when we should
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Anonymous. I don't think we have ever used Pears soap🤔? We normally just buy cheap soap in a dispenser from Lidl. We had Dettol liquid soap recently and that was very good. The young lady in the poster has got a lovely complexion. She must have used Pears soap which she advertised.
ReplyDeleteCame across your blog as I'm now fully retired and hoping to grow more of our own food so am looking for information from thse with more knowledge and experience than me so thanks to you for that. My husband is from Leigh and we often went walking up Rivvy. We also had Imperial Leather at home. Mary now living in Suffolk
DeleteThanks for your comment Mary. I'm veg and perennials growing mad and I am always writing posts about them. Have you never thought of writing your own blog?
DeleteDad loved the smell of Imperial Leather. Grandma liked Pears +did you know that there is a green one now?) red carbolic in the back kitchen...and I love Sunlight Soap....no longer made in Britain...every time I go to NZ I bring back a kilo box.....or two !!
ReplyDeleteImperial Leather. Yes my dad liked that soap GZ. Sunlight soap was invented by a Bolton chemist. He lived at Rivington Pike near Horwich. There use to be an antique centre and tea rooms and bar and we use to go walking up there many moons ago. I bought a Border Collie close to there. I didn't know it wasn't made in Britain anymore. Neither is HP sauce or Raleigh bicycles. You will know that?
ReplyDeleteYes, HP sauce from the Nederlands.
DeleteThis batch of Sunlight Soap was made in Australia, but I have seen some made in Indonesia in the past. Quite a long way from Port Sunlight..
Port Sunlight was on the Wirral GZ. We use to go to the flea market at Ellesmere Port. There's some posh houses on the Wirral. Paul McCartney had an house there if I remember right?
DeleteI don't know..but I do know that Lord Leverhulme...from where the company Unilever started..retired to the Western Isles, built Lewes Castle in Stornoway and tried to boss the crofters around...and failed!
DeleteThanks for the additional information GZ. Port Sunlight was built for the workers. Other patriarchal industrialists were Rowntree and Cadbury. Probably Quakers.
DeleteHave you found any treasures in a charity shop or carboot sale? Well - we probably have but I cannot think of them right now. A nice thing about car boot events is that you never know what you might come across.
ReplyDeleteI have six Pears Soap pictures, all postcard size and have them glued to a sheet of cardboard, they used to hang in my laundry in a previous home but not now, as my laundry is part of the bathroom and they would get too damp. Oops, I just looked at them and they are for Velvet Soap not Pears. Now I'm wondering what I did with the Pears Soap ones.
ReplyDeleteYes you are right YP you never know what you will find. One persons trash is another one's treasure.
ReplyDeleteVelvet soap is a new one to me River. I sometimes see goats milk soap in farmers markets and health shops for sale. Supposed to be good for skin conditions.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother had a Pears Soap advertisement. It was 3 cute fluffy kittens playing. It was really quite beautiful. I wonder what happened to it?
ReplyDeleteHi Debby. I hate that when you think happened to that? Your poster does sound rather beautiful? I have another poster blog by an American artist called GF Gilman. Have you heard of him Debby?
ReplyDelete