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  - Shoe Polish Boxes

Leather care through the ages...

Origins

If the origins of leather go back thousands of years, good quality creams date only from the XXth century. The ancestor of leather cream is wax polish, created by combining a solvent (turpentine) and a fatty ester (beeswax).
In the beginning, leather was tinted, gilded or left in its natural state. Then, the use of common greases and oils permitted to conserve leather suppleness and protect it against humidity.

The beginnings

In 1723, the Richelet dictionary gave the following description of a product intended for leather care: ''a composition of wax, tallow, soot, Venitian turpentine, white of lead and other ingredients boiled together''. This receipe contained all the ingredients of a good shoe polish but did not catch on because of insatisfactory results and excessive cost.
Several other formulas appeared at the same period such as the one by Bachelier in 1749 or by Lebrun in 1777.
During the First Empire however, a new mixture with the following ingredients eclipsed all of them:
- Soot for the colouring
- Beaten egg for the shine
- Vinegar acting as an eraser to smooth the surface
- Beer as a binder


This formula gave an incomparable shine. Unfortunately, the problems arising from scaling, unpleasant odours and colour transfer in rainy weather proved fatal to this receipe.
Between 1820 and 1850, scientists made several attempts based on beer and wine. However, these surface treatments did not permit to clean and nourish leather in depth.

Saphir

The beginning of XXth century saw the reappearance of a formula similar to Richelet's but more economic, based on wax and turpentine but improved with new ingredients such as Brazil wax (1825 by Vauquelin) or Moldavian Ozokorite(1836 by Malgati).
In 1925 at the Paris World Fair, the Rénovateur Saphir was awarded the Gold Medal. This experience and a constant research effort have made SAPHIR a worldwide reference for leather protection and embellishment.