Beltona (England) / 1925
Corporate background:
Launched in 1922, Beltona was a product of
the Murdoch Trading Company of London.
It lasted into the 1950s.
Design: The
image of the drowning girl's face, with her hair flooding out
around her, is a theme that occupied much of 'Decadent' fine
art from the early 1900s to the late 1920s.
An obsession with innocence, physical
beauty, sexual eroticism and occultic spirituality led artists
of the movement to represent their pale heroines in various
stages of depression and grief in neglected and dying gardens,
or drifting slowly and elegantly downstream among swans and
lilies.
It was, in fact, a morbid celebration of
the cult of death. Loosened hair symbolized a return to
primitive abandon; colours were muted, misty and mystical.