Toilet service

The contents vary, but typically include a mirror, one or more small ewers and basins, two candlesticks, and an assortment of bowls, boxes, caskets, and other containers.

The morning levée was sometimes a semi-public occasion for great persons in the early modern period, and the toilet service might be seen by many people.

Depictions in art, such as the Zoffany of Queen Charlotte, usually show that the elaborate crest at the top of the mirror has disappeared beneath the lace covers spreading to the sides, which are probably tied round it.

[12] Descriptions include items such as comb-boxes, glove-trays, soap-boxes, low tazze (or "waiters"), salvers, ecuelles (small bowls with two handles) and others.

[13] The male service was much simpler, typically consisting of a shaving-bowl (oval, with a crescent cut out at one side), ewer and basin, a soap-box, toothbrush holder, perhaps a tongue-scraper and some boxes and bowls.

[17] In the poem: A new Scene to us next presents, The Dressing-Room, and Implements, Of Toilet Plate Gilt, and Emboss'd, And several other things of Cost: The Table Miroir, one Glue Pot, One for Pomatum, and what not?

Of Washes, Unguents, and Cosmeticks, A pair of Silver Candlesticks; Snuffers, and Snuff-dish, Boxes more, For Powders, Patches, Waters store, In silver Flasks or Bottles, Cups Cover'd, or open to wash Chaps;...[18] In the 18th-century special dressing-tables with a fitted mirror began to be made, so removing the need for the traditional centrepiece of a service.

In the Zoffany portrait of Queen Charlotte above: "... Father Time appears scythe-bearing on the clock, but the face reads exactly 2.30pm, which means that the Princes have finished their dinner (which since November 1764 they had taken at 2.00pm) and are visiting their mother, after she has dressed (a process which began at 1.00pm), while their governess waits in the room beyond.

[26] In the 18th century pattern books became important, initially mostly French, but later originating in England and other countries; these supplemented earlier drawings and individual prints.

[28] The English Sackville service of about 1750 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) has several pieces decorated with scenes of lovers in landscapes.

[32] At the same time the development of dressing tables with integral mirrors, and porcelain vessels, represented an alternative style of toilet equipment.

[35] A service in the Royal Collection was created in 1824–25 for Frederick, Duke of York, mostly using pieces a century or more old, supplemented by some contemporary ones and a new case.

[37] When Maria Feodorovna, wife of the future Tsar Paul I of Russia visited Paris in 1782 under a thin incognito as the "Comtesse du Nord", Queen Marie Antoinette gave her a Sèvres toilet service that cost 75,000 livres, though this included decoration in a complicated technique using gold foil, enamel and jewels.

[39] A service in Vincennes porcelain with Parisian gold mounts was apparently intended as a diplomatic gift to Constantinople in the mid-1750s, but was never completed, perhaps because Franco-Turkish relations deteriorated.

[40] Queen Victoria's Minton porcelain service, given as a Christmas present by Prince Albert in 1853, remains on display in her dressing room at Osbourne House.

[43] The Naples Meissen porcelain service, which had an unusually long way to travel from its maker in Dresden, had an individual leather case for each item.

[47] The surviving piece that goes back closest to the origin of the grand toilet set is the mirror from the service of Anne Hyde, wife of the future James II of England, which was made in Paris in 1660–61, and is now in the Louvre.

[55] One of these, a 34 piece silver-gilt English toilet service made in 1708, and presented by her father to Maria Howard, Duchess of Norfolk on her marriage was granted an export license from the UK to Australia in 2012, despite objections by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

[59] By the end of the 19th century, simplified vanity sets were produced in large quantities that consisted of comb, brush, and a hand mirror that can be augmented with a lot of optional items like cuticle pushers, glove stretchers, perfume bottles.

[61] Starting in 1917, DuPont attempted to introduce a lower-cost set made from Pyralin plastic to expand the market[60] by addressing the needs of lower-middle class.

[62] Despite a ten-year effort that involved gender-based advertising addressed to both women and men[62] and redesign of the product from imitation of the more exclusive ivory to unnaturally bright colours, DuPont kept missing the target: the new bob cut hair style that was popularized by Irene Castle in 1909 and became widespread after the Great War had "entirely upset" the hair accessory trade,[63] as a simple comb was sufficient to maintain the new hairdo.