The other day at the flea market I spotted this piece of paper. I was drawn to the fact it looked like a paint palette and the beautiful illustration of a lady on the front. When I turned it around I realized It was an old advert. Another thing which we don’t see anymore these days. Beautiful adverts, similar to calling cards, are a thing of the past. Out with the beautiful and unique handouts, in with the electronic mail.

The piece intrigued me enough that I decided to take a picture and look it up. Unfortunately (or fortunately, it can be kind of fun) it sometimes takes some detective work to figure out the story behind an item. If it was Dolce and Gabana, or Prada or other large brands it would be easy to pull things up on what product it was, when the advert was from, etc. In this case it’s not so easy. This is how I came to gather information on this advertising. A look inside my research process and fun and cool facts at the same time! First, I googled the obvious “Violet Dulce”. Nothing came up, which clued me in that this might be a bit of a harder one. From there I found a bottle of Talcum Powder (More commonly known as Baby Powder today) with the same name. I thought this advert was only for perfume but I looked at the ad again and saw they did also sell talcum powder among other things (Cold Cream, Vanishing Cream, Rouge, Complexion Powder, Etc).

Sometimes Ebay ads will have pieces of information I can add to my searches, in this case not much to go on other than it was “vintage” and had “beautiful colors”. So I widened my search. When nothing really came up I looked closer at the image of the talcum powder and saw it said “Harmony of Boston” in small at the bottom. It wasn’t on the add but I took the lead and it brought me to articles that it showed it was a perfume company. Score. That aligned! This search also brought me to a random metal detecting site where someone had found a bottle with “Harmony of Boston”. In the comments of that post someone said “the company was also called “Langlois”. I then took that piece of information and searched again. I then came up on a website which was a perfume lovers blog. They mentioned that “Dulce Violet” was made by Langlois (A second source mentioning the company tied to the product) and they gave me a new piece of information. This product was made in 1918. This post also listed all the scents from this company and the years which ended in 1962. Which shows me (along with another piece of information I had stumbled on) that this company no longer exists. Which confirms why it’s harder to find information. So there you have it. A quick look at how I got started getting information. Now if this was a scientific article these sources wouldn’t cut it. For the purposes of a bit of quick and fun research though, it does! To end this post here is a few other cool things I found about the story behind this ad.

– They also had ads for lantern slides! Not sure if this was typical for this time periods (another story to explore?) but this means this company had some presence in this time periods. In fact, I found a fascinating post with the whole history of this company! And they mention:

“The United Drug Company is unheard of but, for a time, it was the largest single player in the American cosmetics industry. Even then, although the millions of women in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom bought its products, its name remained hidden behind layers of almost impenetrable corporate curtains.”

This post also mentions “Violet Dulce”. Check it out below (Source 5). A fascinating read!

– A box of this perfume was 25c! (See source 6)

– A single ounce of the essence of which the perfume is made is made from two tons of Parma Violets! Was this true? I don’t know but that’s what they advertised. (See image on blog or source 6 for a few other cool adverts.)

– The company “Langlois”, “harmony of boston.” is tied to Rexall (see source 5). – Violets were popular. They even had violet life savers! Would you try one?

– The stamp on the bottom of the ad “Jury and Lovell The satisfactory Druggists and Opticians” seems to be connected to a company that still exists today “Lovell Drugs”. See source 8 which shows the “about us” section of “Lovell Drugs”. They were called “Jury and Lovell” before and they are based in Ontario Canada which is where I spotted this advert! Another story connected to this piece of paper. So cool.

It’s fascinating what a simple advert I found neat in a flea market made me discover! I would have never learned the things I did if I didn’t take the time to do a bit of research. Until next time! Maya

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Source 1: https://www.ebay.com/itm/164168472540 Source 2: https://metaldetectingforum.com/index.php?threads/harmony-of-boston-perfume.104639/ Source 3: https://cleopatrasboudoir.blogspot.com/2014/01/langlois-perfumes.html Source 4: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266222713424 Source 5: http://collectingvintagecompacts.blogspot.com/2014/11/rexall-and-united-drug-part-1-finding.html Source 6: https://www.parfumo.com/Perfumes/Harmony_of_Boston/Violet_Dulce Source 7: https://www.atticpaper.com/blog/remember-life-savers-violet-candy/ Source 8: https://lovelldrugs.com/About