“Makeup is human history. It reflects our need to paint, to be creative, to be expressive,” said Lisa Eldridge, who has built a private museum in London for her vast vintage cosmetics collection.

Can the history of humanity be told through makeup? Lisa Eldridge is working on it.

Her 5,000-plus collection of beauty products, ranging from an ancient Egyptian kohl mixing palette to Chinese opera makeup brimming with lead, to the beauty packs from the first-class cabins on the Titanic, to the colored eye shadows from Miss Selfridge and CoverGirl from the 1980s and 1990s, is a study in anthropology, philosophy and sentiment.

The collection, housed in a private museum she built inside her London studio, has been in the works since the 1990s, when she bought a box of old Biba makeup at Portobello Road Market for five pounds.

Over the years, the makeup artist and entrepreneur has added blushes, eye creams and color palettes found at estate sales in the U.S.; paints and pigments from Shiseido and other brand archives, and Old Hollywood artifacts, such as Marlene Dietrich’s powder compact and Marilyn Monroe’s lipsticks, bought online, at auction or through her trusted network of dealers.

In some cases, the collection stretches beyond makeup into products, including a “pristine pair” of clippers used to bob ladies’ hair during the flapper era and a tube of cherry toothpaste made by a brand endorsed at the time by Queen Victoria.

Having written the book “Face Paint: The Story of Makeup” (2015), created the BBC series “Makeup: A Glamorous History” (2021), and consulted on exhibitions at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, the Victoria & Albert and the Wellcome Collection in London, Eldridge also gets regular donations from people entrusting her with special paints, powders and formulations that once belonged to friends and family.

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