A White Paint For the Complexion, 1834

Or white talc powder. This recipe comes from The Toilette of Health, Beauty, and Fashion (1834). 

In summary, it calls for fine white talc to be set in twice as much white vinegar, and occasionally shaken/stirred over a two-week period.  After that, decant the vinegar, rinse in fresh water until the vinegar smell is gone, and sift it fine again. This "paint" may be used in powder form, or made into small cakes. 

I decided to leave this batch as a powder, since an almost identical recipe for talc white cakes appears in the Handbook for Ladies' Maids and Guide to the Toilette (1865), and I intend to experiment with that separately. 

Talc in vinegar, and the finished powder.

The talc suspends easily in the vinegar, so the hardest part was definitely decanting off the liquid. I ended up giving it several days to evaporate between each wash cycle (after pipetting/pouring off as much liquid as I could without losing the talc). After the final wash, I let it sit for most of a week to get thoroughly dry, then used a mortar and pestle to break up small remaining clumps. I did not have any silk fine enough to sift the powder through.

It's hard to photograph, but the half of my hand nearest the thumb
is visibly whiter than the portion without this 'paint'.

When I tried it on the skin, the talc did make my pink complexion a little whiter. The tricky part is getting the excess powder off: rubbing/dusting off the distinct powder residue at the edges and in contours, without removing all of the color. I definitely want to play around with this some more, and could see using it at formal evening events (particularly the ones held by candlelight).