1873 | Everyday Life
Everyday Life
Japan's Empress Shōken stops staining her teeth black and wearing her hair in the traditional manner that for centuries has identified a married woman in order to set an example. Inaugurator of the new fashion has been feminist Kajiko (originally Katsuko) Yajima, 40, who married at age 25, bore three daughters, but left her husband 10 years after their marriage because he was a heavy drinker and abused her.
Provençal perfume makers at Grasse revolutionize the industry with a new process that extracts a solid essence from flower roots or from fragrant substances by placing them in contact with volatile fluids that dissolve essential ingredients and isolate them as they evaporate (see eau de Cologne, 1709). Tanners and other leather workers in the area have perfumed themselves and their leathers, gaining knowledge of making botanical essences. Essential oils will comprise 22 percent of perfume (the rest being alcohol), they will comprise as little as 4 percent of eau de Cologne, and Grasse will become a center for the perfume industry's flower and herb growing.
Levi Strauss adds copper rivets to his blue jeans (see 1853). It will later be said, jokingly, that a prospector named Alkali carried rock specimens in his pockets and had his bibless overalls riveted by a blacksmith. In fact, Strauss has been approached by Nevada tailor Jacob W. Davis with the idea of riveting the pocket corners of pants for extra strength, and Strauss patents the riveting process with Davis, copyrighting the name "Levi's" and the double-bow pattern stitched on the back pockets. The riveted denims sell at $13.50 per dozen (see 1853; 1937).
Austrian-born Sheboygan, Wisconsin, entrepreneur John Michael Kohler, 29, buys the Sheboygan Union Iron and Steel Foundry and goes into business making cast-iron and steel plowshares and other agricultural implements. Employing other immigrants as well as local workers, he will diversify into hitching posts and other castings (see bathtub, 1883).