Debunking the Myth of Maurice Levy and the Invention of Metal Lipstick Containers
As an ancillary post to my short article addressing the myth that jews – and specifically Maurice Levy – ‘invented’ lipstick and/or metal lipstick containers. I reproduce ‘Collecting Vintage Compacts’s’ 2015/2016 article from Blogger debunking it in detail using her own archival research. (1)
Naturally her article remains her (and only her) intellectual property and I only publish it here to save it for posterity as well as to help it achieve a wider audience as it richly deserves. I’ve only taken the liberty of editing it a little bit to make it easier reading and nothing of substance has been altered.
She writes that:
Somehow, or another, there is a belief, expressed in a number of current online sites, that a certain Maurice Levy invented metal lipstick containers and introduced them to the United States.
Here is one such statement:
“American Maurice Levy invents the first metal containers for cosmetics – the most famous and enduring being the lipstick tube. The Scovill Manufacturing Co mass produces the tube. Levy also makes metal eyebrow pencil holders.”
Another statement is:
“French company Guerlain put colour into a stick in 1912 and three years later, in 1915, Maurice Levy of the Scovil (sic) Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut came up with the clincher - an innovative metal case, resembling a bullet, and capable of mass-production, to contain the previously messy business of lipstick application.”
And yet another version is:
“The first American metal lipstick case was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company (Connecticut, U.S.A.) in 1915. The modern lipstick can be said to have been the result of a meeting in New York in 1915 between Anthony Guash, a French cosmetics manufacturer and Maurice Levy, an American investor. Their meeting had been arranged by an official of the Scovill Manufacturing Company and resulted in the formation of the French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company.”
There are many other published statements (including a statement by Kate de Castelbajac in her otherwise excellent publication ‘The Face of The Century - 100 Years of Makeup and Style’) with similar claims and most are what I would term ‘fractured fairy tales’. By that I mean that although there is some basis in fact in some of the claims, most are without foundation and the linkage with Levy and lipsticks is circumstantial, at best. Once you have finished reading this post I hope you will also agree that he did not invent the first metal containers for cosmetics, including lipsticks, in 1915, or at any other time.
But, before I embark on my exposé, I need to acknowledge one indisputable fact. In 1947, The Toilet Goods Association, Inc (TGA) – an American industry group – commissioned a certain Gilbert Vail to write a report that would summarize the development and use of cosmetics in the United States.
What eventuated was a publication titled ‘A History of Cosmetics in America’, and on page 116 Vail wrote:
“The Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut is supposed to have made the first (metal cartridge lipstick containers) for an American company on an order from Mr Maurice Levy in October 1915…these were simple oval-shaped tubes about two inches long in a plain dip nickel finish with a slide lever on the side to eject the paste as it dwindled through use…”.
Well, I guess that is the source of the understanding that some people have about Scovill, Levy and lipsticks, even though Gilbert Vail was careful to say that Scovill was only supposed to have made the first of these cartridge containers. Kate de Castelbajac merely parroted this same claim. Despite all this, we are still a long way from supporting the notion that Maurice Levy invented the first metal containers for cosmetics.
So please read on….
It should also be said at the outset that Maurice Levy did make a substantial contribution to American cosmetics history, but it was not measured by any significant reference to lipsticks. Instead, his mark was made in the manufacture of powder puffs as well as the importation of French-manufactured cosmetics products and accessories.
Here is the real story of Maurice Diogene Levy.
It begins with his father, Felix, who hailed from that often-disputed city of Strasbourg which, depending of the outcome of one of the frequent wars between the French and Prussians and later the Germans, was either a French city or a German one. While it is not reported exactly when he left Strasbourg (although I suspect it was after the Franco Prussian War in about 1871), we do know that he and his family spent time in Reims where, incidentally, Maurice Levy was born on 23 April 1880, the second of three sons that Felix and his wife Henrietta would have.
Felix Levy’s profession at that time is not recorded but we can confidently speculate that he was involved in a toilet goods business of some description. Although he was neither a perfumer nor a manufacturer of toilet preparations, such as powder or creams, he was probably involved in what the Americans termed ‘The Druggist Sundry’ business. This involved the supply and manufacture of ancillary items such as brushes, beauty patches and powder puffs, to name just three. It seems clear, however, that Felix Levy’s prime business interest was concerned with the third item in the list - powder puffs.
In fact, in the 1900 US Federal Census, three years after Felix Levy and his family had immigrated to the United States, his profession was noted as ‘powder puff manufacturer’. In the same census, Felix’s eldest son Benjamin and second son Maurice were both recorded as being ‘clerks’ in their father’s business, which was based in Manhattan. In an interview recorded with Maurice Levy in 1949, he reminisced about the early days of his father’s business when his attempts to make swans down powder puffs initially collapsed in failure. He recalled what happened when the flock of geese, from which ‘swan’s down’ puffs were to be made, failed to gain enough weight. He reportedly said phlegmatically (and probably apocryphally): “I made a few puffs from the goose down and then ate the stock.”
For the history of compacts it is important to highlight an important and obvious fact. For most of the nineteenth century, women who chose to put on face powder did so in the privacy of their homes or, for those on the stage, in their dressing rooms. The powder was in a loose form and was sold in large, typically cardboard, canisters or wooden boxes. For women who could afford them, there were large metal puff boxes that could be purchased into which face powder could be transferred. These puff boxes were a more attractive and more permanent feature of their dressing tables. The powder was applied with a large (often swan’s down or lamb’s wool) puff but soft cloth such as chamois leather or felt was also used. It was not until women demanded portability of their powder (and rouge) that smaller powder containers started being produced and these, of course, required smaller powder applicators. In an early post I have traced the evolution of face powder containers noting that the transition from dresser-top powder and puff boxes to portable vanity boxes began in the 1870s in Europe and a few years later in the United States.
While Felix Levy’s business concentrated on the importation and sale of powder puffs it was also an importer of other French toilet goods. In the same 1949 retrospective interview Maurice Levy recalled importing French-made face powder, rouge and face cream as well as beauty spots. He also said: “I’m the only cosmetic man in New York who has rabbit paws…I import around a thousand dozen from Madame Bertrand in Paris”. (Rabbit paws were used to apply dry rouge). Absent from his reminiscing, however, was any reference to lipsticks and while this may not be important, one would have thought that if he had, indeed, invented the first metal containers for cosmetics, he may have mentioned that, even in passing but, no matter, there is more compelling evidence to come.
For some reason that I have not been able to explain, Felix Levy named his company The Maurice Levy Company. It is unlikely that he named it after his second son, who would have been just seventeen years old when the company was formed in 1897. But, as things turned out, the company quickly became one associated with that son. Felix assumed a surprisingly low-profile role and Benjamin, the eldest son, would quit the company to become the American head of a new French perfumery called Coty, once it started doing business in the US in about 1906. This left the way clear for a young and energetic Maurice Levy to start putting his mark on the company his father had established.
It was an exciting time to be involved in the toilet goods business, in The United States, in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. Demand was skyrocketing for face powder, perfumery, various creams for all purposes, eye liners and of course, rouge in dry solid, liquid and semi solid form. The latter category is of particular interest for this story because this lip rouge, as it was originally known, eventually became lipstick.
At that time, the use of lipstick (as well as face powder and rouge), especially in public, was seen by American society as an affront to its long-held moral values regarding women and their behavior. An example of prevailing attitudes was illustrated in a March 1908 article that was titled ‘Hideous on a Young Girl’.
In part it said:
“The lip stick is, however, more popular than the use of rouge. Going down in the cars any morning, even as early as 8 o’clock, one sees pretty girls on their way to work with carmined lips. I once saw a girl not more than twenty years old take out a pocket mirror and a stick of lip rouge in a fashionable restaurant filled with diners and calmly proceed to make up her mouth with only a perfunctory pretense of concealment.”
This was a shocking sight for the times, but the public use of cosmetics was growing and was unstoppable. While that particular newspaper article did not suggest that the lip stick mentioned was contained in a metal tube, it is understandable that women would be beginning to demand a more durable container than the paper-covered tubes that were on the market at the time. This demand would be met well before the claimed date of 1915. With images of women applying lipstick or lip pomade as early as 1910 (and articles describing lipstick being applied in 1908), I think I can put to rest the claim that it was the French perfumery Guerlain that first put colour on a stick in 1912. It was not, but who it was and when it was must wait for another time.
The earliest evidence of metal ‘lipstick’ containers in the United States comes from newspaper advertisements, also in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Before this time the makers of the lip sticks or lip rouges did not manufacture, or even cause to be manufactured, these early metal containers because cosmetics such as face powder, dry rouge, and indeed lip rouge in stick form, were packaged and retailed in paper or cardboard containers and wrappers. Metal, or other durable materials such as celluloid, containers were simply never used as the primary packaging material. For women who were looking for durable and portable containers for their cosmetics their only option was the jewellery industry.
By 1908 American jewellers in New England centres such as Providence, RI and Attleboro, MA had been manufacturing different styles of metal containers for cosmetics for just a few years. Women who wanted to protect their cosmetics while they were out in public could and did transfer them into more durable containers made from metal. Jewellers such as Reed and Barton and many others responded to this growing demand by designing and manufacturing little metal containers, which could be hung on a chatelaine or, as a single pendant ornament. An advertisement that appeared in ‘The Brooklyn Daily Eagle’ newspaper on 21 March 1910 illustrates this point.
It contained these words:
“Chatelaines are again in favor…The Chatelaines consist of a finger ring from which suspends three, four or five chains…to hold ornaments…The ornaments are useful and needed articles, such as pencils, memorandum tablets, coin holders, lip rouge cases, stamp cases etc.”
The lip rouge cases in question were made from sterling silver, were hand engraved and sold for $2.47, even more expensive than another chatelaine ornament – the puff box (for face powder) that sold for $2.18. These were not cheap but they were metal –albeit silver - and they were intended for cosmetics.
In February 1910 Saks & Company advertised:
“Sterling silver chatelaines consisting of five pieces: bonbonniere, memo tablet with pencil, lip rouge, coin purse and mirror.”
Even in Kansas City, in April 1910, an advertisement appeared that illustrated a chatelaine with lip stick.
‘The Charlotte News’ of 12 November 1911 described these new novelties in this way.
“Another chatelaine ornament much fancied nowadays is the lip-stick case. To the unsophisticated this slender gold or silver tube might appear to be an innocent pencil of the sort that telescopes upon itself when not in use; but one end of the metal case opens on a tiny hinge and within is revealed the stick of jelly-like lip rouge, which more women than one...use now.”
Eventually, when chatelaines went out of fashion and were replaced by the large, oblong, necessaires or ‘party boxes’, or dance purses, as some called them, the lip rouge case was also featured. In a September 1914 advertisement for a German silver (no silver content, at all) case, its contents included, ‘lip rouge case, vinaigrette, buttonhook, nail file, comb, puff box and purse’ – Whew!!
It is very clear that metal cases of various designs for lip sticks were present in the American market as early as 1910 (and possibly a few years earlier) and that these containers were made by jewellers and other novelty manufacturers, rather than the makers of the cosmetics. The latter still preferred to package their face powders and rouges (including lip rouge) in paper or cardboard. It is also impossible to imagine that Maurice Levy, who was neither a jeweller nor a designer (he was an importer of various items associated with toilet preparations but particularly powder puffs), had anything to do with the invention of lipstick cases of other metal cosmetics cases made by so many different jewellers throughout the United States.
So, when did cosmetics manufacturers start using metal containers as a packaging material? In France, there is evidence of aluminium rouge boxes being used by Dorin as early as 1910 and a very sophisticated brass double face powder and rouge box being marketed by Houbigant in 1913, to name just two early examples. In the United States metal containers were first used as promotional giveaways associated with the purchase of particular cosmetics products.
This practice began in about 1911 with a number of companies using American Stopper Company tin, lithographed, containers to promote their own face powder products. These included: The Sanitol Chemical Laboratory Company, The Tetlow Manufacturing Company, Plexo Toilet Preparations, The Dr. Pierre Chemical Company, The Willis H Lowe Company and The Golden Rule House. Other examples include Marinello’s famous ‘Lucky Elephant’ coin purse and face powder box and the J B Williams silver-plated talc box.
But none of these really qualify as being the utilitarian, primary, packaging material, encasing the cosmetic product, which left the factory for sale to the consumer. These early American examples were still in the category of promotional novelties. We still need to find evidence of the first American cosmetics containers that used metal as the primary packaging material. In other words, metal containers that were filled with a cosmetics manufacturer’s product and sold in that form to the public.
Perhaps what is being claimed in various on-line references is that Maurice Levy’s supposed invention was the first metal lipstick container that was designed as the primary packaging material for a stick of lip rouge. That would make more sense but is this interpretation true? To answer this question, we need to return to Maurice Levy’s business.
In 1910 Maurice, at the age of thirty and still single, was living with his parents in Manhattan and he, like his father, listed his profession as ‘importer’. Just what he imported was revealed in a 1913 trade advertisement in which it was stated that Maurice Lévy (note the e acute) of 15 and 17 West 38th Street, New York was an importer of Powder Puffs (these words were highlighted in the advertisement) and Make Ups.
The ad went on to say:
“We carry in stock all styles of Powder Puffs for vanity boxes and for silver and gold mountings. A full assortment of Eyebrow Pencils, Lip Pomade, Powder Books, Concrete Powder, Nail Polish etc.”
There was no mention of lip stick tubes, I must point out. Nor was there any mention of the company making anything! It represented itself as an importer and nothing more. The products that Levy imported were mainly those made by the French company J Simon with its Crême Simon range as well as products made by Société Hygiénique (probably Cottan).
Despite not manufacturing anything, the importation business must have been very profitable, though. From having to eat the geese intended as a basis for swans down puffs, at the turn of the century, Maurice Levy had come up in the world by the time of the 1915 New York State Census. By then he had met and married Evelyn, adopted her daughter from a previous marriage, and fathered two sons, named Maurice and Felix, just to confuse later researchers into his family! He and his family were living in Mamaroneck, NY together with six live-in servants including; a nurse, three maids, a gardener and a chauffeur. In this Census record he still described himself as an ‘importer of toilet articles’. Business must have been very good, indeed. And it was just about to get better.
Europe was at war and, as a result, the business of importing toilet articles from France or anywhere else on the other side of the Atlantic had all but stopped. What this forced Levy to do was to start manufacturing the products that previously he had been importing and he decided on two parallel courses of action.
The first was the creation of his own brand of powder puffs that he called Hygienol, possibly influenced by his dealings with the French company Société Hygiénique, which he would manufacture in his New York premises. But it soon became clear that the 38th Street facility was simply not adequate for any large-scale manufacturing operation and in December 1916 he acquired a factory in New Rochelle that had been owned previously by the Hazel-Morse Soap Company. He equipped this factory with weaving machines for the manufacture of much greater volumes of lamb’s wool powder puffs. In fact, it was reported that Maurice Levy shipped about 3.5 million powder puffs in the year 1917 alone! The trade journal ‘The American Perfumer and Essential Oil Review’ went on to comment about the fact that Levy had been involved in the powder puff business for twenty years. Not one word about lipsticks or any other cosmetic product, I hasten to add.
Maurice Levy’s second strategy, however, was the organization, in late 1915, of a completely separate company that he named ‘The French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company. This new company was originally established as an importation business – despite its name – but quickly adjusted to becoming a small manufacturing concern. A chemist was hired but was not French as some have suggested. Instead, Anthony (Antoine) Guasch was Spanish. The new company operated out of the same address as Maurice Levy’s New York premises at 15 West 38th Street. Eventually, in 1921, The French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company would relocate to New Rochelle to join Levy’s Hygienol factory.
There was clearly a very close relationship between Maurice Levy and The French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company, but Maurice Levy’s business persona was always associated with the manufacture of powder puffs and not at all with metal cosmetics containers of any description. Having said that there is evidence of a small, brass, slip top vanity box that contained a product called ‘Rubis Pompadour’. It is quite likely that such a container emerged in about 1915 along with similar containers marketed by companies such as Colgate and Helena Rubinstein. They may well have been made in France before the effects of the war stopped such manufacture. But there is no suggestion that Maurice Levy or the French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company had anything to do with the making or designing of such cases.
On the other hand, The Scovill Manufacturing Company was clearly involved in some of the earliest manufacturing in the United States of brass cosmetics containers. This early involvement went back to the dresser top Pozzoni puff boxes of the 1890s and extended to the small, brass puff boxes (that used a 1911 patented closure by Scovill employee John Goss) made in about 1912 for both McKesson and Robbins and its Parfums Renée brand and Ingram’s Velveola Souveraine. Scovill’s involvement was also with the iconic Boodle Box that the Pozzoni Company released in 1915 and which had been designed by Pozzoni employee Jean Gunder in May 1915. Clearly, The Scovill Manufacturing Company did manufacture brass cosmetics containers – many well before 1915 – but none with any connection to Maurice Levy.
So, what about brass lip stick containers?
With something so revolutionary – in packaging terms, at least – I would expect to see some sort of patent protection, either from the inventor or from the manufacturer. Neither is evident in 1915 or before. In fact, the earliest patent for a metal lip stick tube comes from the prolific inventor William Kendall. Filed in January 1917, Kendall stated as his objective: ‘the provision of a neat, ornamental and serviceable lip stick holder which may be cheaply manufactured and readily assembled.’
The basic design of this container was a tube to hold a stick of rouge, covered by a cap and including something he called ‘a lipstick receiving follower’, which allowed the lipstick to be moved up and down in the tube. He referred to previous designs that had a threaded screw attached to the follower – which would have been very expensive to manufacture and were probably designs used by jewellers rather than brass mills such as Scovill.
Here was my dilemma. All my research into Maurice Levy had failed to uncover any evidence of his involvement with the design or manufacture of brass cosmetics containers. Yet, Gilbert Vail and his ‘A History of Cosmetics in America’ suggested otherwise. I needed to dig deeper to try and find the reason for this contradiction.
There are, to my knowledge, just two repositories of Scovill Manufacturing Company records. The first is held at Harvard’s Baker Library and an exhaustive search of this archive failed to uncover anything about Maurice Levy or the first metal lipstick container. The second repository is held at The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT and this is where I found my answer. Simply put, Scovill executives gave Gilbert Vail the wrong information.
How this came about was due to a combination of factors, including the fact that Vail was working to a very tight deadline to produce copy for the publication and the fact that Scovill was very busy with normal production as well as not having any detailed records of its early manufacturing.
So, when on 12 November 1946 Vail first wrote to Scovill, the response, while very prompt, was also very vague. In his first letter Vail explained that he was doing research for ‘The History of Cosmetics in America’ and was specifically interested in “finding out who first manufactured and sold in America lip sticks put up in metal containers.”
Vail admitted that there was a difference of opinion in the industry as to what company introduced lip stick in that form but most agreed that Scovill probably would have manufactured them. Vail also asked if the company could provide the names of other American companies who were the pioneers in using metal containers for their cosmetics in the USA.
What followed, in the absence of any corporate records, was an exercise in the imperfect recollection of events that may have taken place over thirty years earlier. Even though the recipient of Vail’s letters - LeRoy Root - had been involved in the design and manufacture of some Scovill-manufactured cases and even had a number of patents to his name, his memory was hazy about events that had taken place well before he had joined the company. On the copy of the letter written by Vail, Root had pencilled the following notes – Solon Palmer, Pouch Ponzi (sic), Dorine, F R Arnold Compact, Anthony Guash, Europe, M Levy, French Cos’. In a seeming stream of consciousness, these words and phrases were the first things to come to his mind.
The following day, a Mr. McKnight from Scovill’s Sales Department replied to Vail and said:
“Offhand we recall that we had one of the early lipsticks from a gentleman by the name of Anthony Guash who came over from Europe and we believe Mr Power who was with the company (Scovill) for 55 years…handled the matter and put him in touch with Mr Maurice Levy and out of that we believe grew The French Cosmetic Company.”
McKnight went on to say that the first vanity box made by Scovill was also handled by Mr. Power for a firm called ‘Ponzi’. These recollections would prove to be unreliable at best.
Evidently keen to finish off this enquiry, McKnight provided additional information on 11 December 1946.
In this letter he advised that:
“We have found an old container which we believe is the first lipstick, which I referred to in my letter of November 13 to you, and the date of this order was October 2, 1915, Mr Maurice Levy... I am also enclosing two samples of an eyebrow pencil holder (the) order for which was placed October 2, 1915, also for Maurice Levy.”
It is this information that Gilbert Vail seized on, and which would be reflected in his final copy for his history. In April 1947 the Toilet Goods Association (TGA) gave Scovill an excerpt from the proof of the proposed history, for clearance, that contained the October 1915 date as well as the Maurice Levy connection. The problem was that McKnight’s advice to Vail was wrong and what was written was, therefore, also wrong.
Another Scovill employee, the unfortunately named Mr. Hemlock, advised that Scovill had made lip pomade tubes (Hemlock’s term for lip stick) before the October 1915 date – not for Maurice Levy but for the Chicago-based Luxor company, in 1914.
What followed was an exercise in corporate face-saving and dissembling.
In an internal Scovill memorandum dated 29 April 1947 the following was recorded:
“The information we gave in our letter of December 11, 1946, was the best obtainable information from available records, and it may be well to tell the TGA that the information is true according to the records we can establish in Waterbury, but that there has been considerable change in personnel over a period of years and it may be that some slightly earlier dates could be established, or something along this line.”
On 1 May 1947 Scovill cleared the excerpt with the following cautionary note:
“It is possible that further intensive investigation would unearth some pertinent information earlier than that contained in the excerpt, but it is felt that the excerpt as outlined satisfactorily covers the situation.”
In other words, Scovill did not want to waste more time on the matter even though they were aware of an earlier date for their first metal lip stick (lip pomade) tube.
No matter that Maurice Levy was not associated with Scovill’s manufacturing of its first brass lipstick tube, and indeed, had no part to play in its design. History has been written and once written it assumes a weight that is often impossible to move. But I hope that this exposé will convince those who read it that recorded history in this instance is wrong and that Maurice Levy neither designed nor invented the first American lipstick case.
His involvement was simply to place an order with Scovill for lipstick tubes and eyebrow pencil tubes that he planned to fill with products he intended to manufacture with his newly formed French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company. The containers in question had been recently designed and manufactured by Scovill for other clients but the records concerning who designed them and when do not now exist.
My belief is that it was probably William Kendall who was responsible for the lipstick design and that his 1917 patent reflects the original design in question.
There is also another perspective that needs to be considered. Staff of the Scovill Manufacturing Company were simply responding to the questions posed by Gilbert Vail. Their answers, as imperfect as they may have been, came from the internal perspective of Scovill rather than from the perspective of American manufacturing as a whole.
In other words, Scovill was not saying that it was the first company to manufacture metal cosmetics containers in The United States (although it may have been). The Sears Roebuck Catalog of Fall 1911, on page 967, clearly shows a metal lip stick container (although it was described as lip rouge) being advertised for 67 cents. So, someone manufactured this affordable gilt metal tube, but it was not Maurice Levy and may not even have been The Scovill Manufacturing Company!
I will cover the history of Maurice Levy and Hygienol in more detail in another post and will do the same for The French Cosmetic Manufacturing Company. In the meantime, I stand my ground on the assertion that Maurice Levy did not invent the first metal cosmetics containers in 1915 and especially did not invent the first metal lipstick tubes. But for the sake of completeness and accuracy he did file for a patent on a bullet-shaped lipstick container in 1929, but more on that later.
References
(1) https://collectingvintagecompacts.blogspot.com/2015/12/maurice-levy-man-who-never-invented.html