History of nail polish

The Incas decorated their fingernails with pictures of eagles, but it is unclear how the practice of colouring nails progressed following these beginnings. Portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries include shiny nails.  By the turn of the 19th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed with a chamois cloth, rather than simply polished.  English and US 19th century cookbooks had directions for making nail paints (polishes). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people pursued a polished rather than painted look by massaging tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them shiny. One such polishing product sold around this time was Graf's Hyglo nail polish paste. Some people during this period painted their nails with clear, glossy varnish applied with a camel-hair brush. After the creation automobile paint Cutex produced the first nail modern nail polishes in 1917 with the introduction of colored nail glosses.  Once nail polish was refined, it was often used in the place of gloves to cover up the grime underneath the nails.  Colored nail polish was also considered at one time self-mutilation by psychiatrists and unhealthy. Despite this, the first lady to wear solid colors was Eleanor Rosevelt.