History of Nail Polish

When it comes to girls,of all ages, almost all of them have the habit of wearing nail polish. Nail polish originated in China, and its use dates back to 3000 BC. Around 600 BC, during the Zhou dynasty, the royal house preferred the colors gold and silver. However, red and black eventually replaced these metallic colors as royal favorites. During the Ming dynasty, nail polish was often made from a mixture that included beeswax, egg whites, gelatin, vegetable dyes, and gum Arabic.

In Egypt, the lower classes wore pale colors, whereas high society painted their nails a reddish brown, with henna. It was also known that mummified pharaohs would have their nails painted by henna.^[5]

By the turn of the ninth century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people preferred a polished rather than a painted look by mixing tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them until shiny.