Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Friday 11 September 2015

Renewed Lustre


Mateus Rosé was the iconic drink of the 1970s. I don’t remember it tasting particularly good, but the bottles were a pleasing shape with attractive labels. It was probably quite cheap to buy and was within our student budgets. After we had polished off the wine we would use the bottle as a candle holder, allowing the drips of successive coloured candles to form a rainbow-coloured carapace. This image comes from my souvenir programme from the Lords Taverners charity cricket match at RAF Cranwell, and the advert is alluding to the charity’s 21st birthday in 1971. The complete programme can be viewed on my Flickr album.

Another colourful label is this one, spotted on at the ‘Whirrs, Cogs and Thingamabobs’ exhibition at the Naval Dockyards, Chatham in 2012. Again, you can see some of the oddities on display in my Flickr album of the exhibition. This label is for a chemically treated dust puff from the 1950s.


I can almost forgive the incorrect use of it’s for its, because I was amused by the description of the ‘patented kinky construction’. Even though it was ‘soft and fluffy’ it promised to ‘renew lustre’ - very similar to the Mateus Rose in fact.


This week’s Sepia Saturday calls for adverts, wine and old labels, so I’ve ticked all the boxes. Why not join us and see some more polished posts.

15 comments:

  1. I don't think I ever had Mateus Rose but I always assumed it was a rose rather than a white, not that I would necessarily have noticed at the time :)

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  2. Mateus Rosé – I remember it well, but I don’t think I ever really enjoyed it.

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  3. Oh, I had one of those bottles with waxy dribbles all over it! And used it on the top of a Halloween costume once -- I went to a party as a table in an Italian restaurant (my father's wacky idea)!

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  4. I think I will start a waxy dribble on my next empty wine bottle.

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  5. I did drink that wine, back when I thought I could drink anything. Did I hold my nose? These days I'd love a "kinky" fluffy thing to dust with, because same nose now is very allergic to dust, and oh how my little shelved things collect it!

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  6. I would love to have a kinky Dust Puff. I'm sure anything kinky would surely brighten up dusting the house !

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  7. It's all in the packaging, isn't it? Spirits require only a sexy shape, while dust puffs need shapely words!

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  8. For years my parents had a Vat 69 bottle as a lamp base. For a while I thought that's what all lamp bases looked like ;)

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  9. Can just imagine the rainbow of wax drips. Something lovely about picking them off! Never tried Mateus Rose, doesn't sound too tempting, nice bottle though.
    Not sure what to make of a kinky dust puff! Certainly pulled out all the stops with the advertising...

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  10. I remember Mateus Rose very well, Neither my husband or I were into wines, but this was the one we chose when we went out for a meal before our marriage (not much money afterwards for wine!!). It was very popular in the 1970's and then seemed to fade away, I was expecting a wine label for your second image, so was rather puzzled at first by the "Chemically Treated Dust Puff" - I must admit I had never heard of it.

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  11. I had not heard from Mateus before. I'm just back from Lisbon where we drank Alentejo and Douro wine.

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  12. We spent a very interesting few hours at Chatham Dockyard a few months ago, and may well have seen that Kinky dust puff advertisement, but I didn't take a photo, unlike you.

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  13. Had to laugh at your "forgiveness" of the "it's" -- when I read the label and saw the "it's" I couldn't keep reading. Your comment let me know it was worth reading the whole thing, so I went back!

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  14. Ah yes, I had one of those bottles too. And it was used as a candle holder. It sat on a window sill at my folks cabin. You've got me wondering if I still have it or tossed it when the cabin was sold.

    Great label. Kinky! These days there are so many typos on packages that I'm stunned nobody finds them before they go to print. People have always been a bit lazy about proofreading. Your label is a good one!

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  15. What an interesting twist, and something highly worth learning about.

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