Pears Soap and Cyclopaedia

[To enlarge, click on the pictures, all in the post]

Many of us were fond of this transparent [actually translucent], oval shaped, darkish amber coloured, delightfully fragrant and mild bath soap. It was one of the very few soap brands, even doctors and paediatricians were safely recommending to patients esp. with sensitive skin.  Long lasting and hard, the fragrance filled the home when someone came out after a 'Pears bath'. How we enjoyed looking through the 'transparent' soap when it got thin!  How automatically we put it close to the nostrils to take in the smell when a new bar was opened for use!  'Pears soap' was not missed when the monthly list of 'essential items' to be bought was prepared.

Pears Soap is the world's oldest registered brand. Who made this beautiful soap? Andrew Pears. He had trained as a barber and had stepped into manufacturing cosmetics in 1781. Andrew was observing that people who used general cosmetic products were coming up with problems that resulted from the content of Arsenic and Lead in them.  So after experimentation he came up with a soap formula in 1789 with just a few ingredients like glycerin and natural oils that was gentle on the skin.  The first "Pears Transparent Soap" was marketed in 1807.  The virtues of the soap gained people's acceptance because it lived up to its claim as "pure soap".  'Pears' became a household name in the following decades for its pure quality and also due to vigourous marketing and advertising.  "Good morning, have you used Pears soap?" was one of several popular advertisement slogans used by Andrew Pears.

This Wiki link has plenty of information on Pears [Click]

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A thumbnail sketch of Pears.

1781 - Andrew Pears, a Cornish barber sets up business;

1789 - soap first produced and sold by Andrew Pears at a factory just off Oxford Street in London, England, the world's first transparent soap;

1835 - grandson Francis Pears joined the business to form A. & F. Pears;

1838 - Andrew Pears retired;

Francis' son-in-law Thomas J. Barratt, [often considered as Father of modern advertising] joins the company; under the stewardship of Barratt, A. & F. Pears initiated a number of innovations in sales and marketing. According to Unilever records, Pears Soap was the world's first registered brand and is therefore the world's oldest continuously existing brand.

1862 - production of the soap moved to Isleworth;

1865 - Francis' son, Andrew, joined A. & F. Pears Ltd. as joint proprietor and ran the factory; Thomas J Barratt ran the head office in London.

1910s - A. &  F. Pears Ltd. became part of Lever Brothers and production moved to Port Sunlight, Cheshire, England;

2011 - Pears soap is now made in India by Hindustan Lever, a company in which Unilever controls a fifty-two percent stake.

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Pears also started to publish a Cyclopaedia.  The first Pears' Shilling Cyclopaedia was published in 1897, it aimed to offer a taxonomy 'not of all knowledge, but of necessary knowledge'.  The edition from the following year, 1898, which seems to be the first the British Library has in its catalogue, is split into nine distinct sections: English Dictionary, General Knowledge, Dictionary of Synonyms, Desk Information (how to mix paint, postage rates, how to remove stains from books, the order of precedence of the Royal family, etc), Gazetteer of the World, Atlas of the World, Dictionary of Cookery, Language of Flowers and Medical Dictionary. Here, then, is a compact reference library in a single volume.
And this, the 1898 edition, my great grandfather, had purchased as early as 14.1.1899 for One Rupee.  Here is his account book entry:

Here are some images from this edition, which survived a bad termite attack on the bookshelf.  The paper has become very brittle.  I made some external repairs.

On the right is the 40th edition,  July 1931. Actually, it was published as and when they found demand for it, sometimes more than once a year. 

The first three pages.

The 'English Dictionary' section.

Termites can destroy libraries.

A page from the section 'Language of Flowers'.

There are several entries in my great grandfather's account books having purchased "Soap".  But he does not mention any name, like he mentions "Kesharanjan Oil" or "Eno's Fruit Salt".  So the brand he was bringing home remains a mystery.  It could be Pears, though there were brands like 'Vinolia' also at that time. That soap was also from England. 

My great grandfather's home library had two later editions of Pears Cyclopadeias, both printed in 1931, one in March and the other, July. One had survived with its jacket in tact.  [See picture] But his account book does not have any entry for having purchased these during 1931 or 32. It is also not known where they were sold.

Soap makers by appointment to Their Majesties The King and Queen [King George V / Queen Mary] and to Their Late Majesties Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.

The morning bath is baby's joy. With Pears he wants no other joy.

Pears' Soap is transparent because it is PURE! "It wears, but does not waste" ~ an ad of Pears, 1789.

It did not waste in my time also. When it became nearly paper thin, just before it could have snapped, it was stuck in the concave surface of the new cake.

The painting: St. Paul's from Blackfrairs Bridge, 1840, in possession of A & F Pears. 

3 million copies printed. July 1931.

"Bubbles" the painting [1886] by Sir John Everett Millais was purchased by Thomas Barratt in 1890, a famous advertisement for Pears soap.  See the soap near the shoe of the girl. In the 1931 edition.

Read the first two paras of the above. Interesting.

Section separators with interesting messages.

From the Atlas section.

Pages.

Section of Dictionary of Photography. Most of the jargon in it for the present 'digital' generation will be like Greek or Japanese!

In 2017, came the 125th edition by which time demand had gone down drastically and the publishers decided that the 126th would signal the final edition which was released this year, 2018. 

Pears' Cyclopaedia, 1897 - 2018. 

One tin box which my late aunt was fondly keeping is treasured.  

"The original glycerine beauty soap". 

This is a plastic freebie, a soap box Pears offered post 1995, along with a pack of three. 

The beautiful texture of Pears' soap, not too hard on the knife as to break nor too soft to stick to it was found by soap carving artists highly suitable for their crafts.  Around the year 1970, I remember having visited with my late aunt to the house of such an artist in Chamarajapuram's Balakrishna Road.   The best among his many displayed works I vividly remember was Krishna-Arjuna's chariot, a very complicated work of his, entirely from Pears soap, including the thin reins. It was somewhat like this wooden sample:

Millions of patrons found it hard to accept when Pears altered the original formula.  We were no exception and thereafter our Pears' priority dropped low. We are left to imagine and resort to olfactory memory to recall that 'heavenly fragrance'.

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