Understanding the History of Artificial Nails
Women have been taking advantage of long nails for hundreds of years now. These days they are known as a symbol of femininity, though in history they were once seen as a symbol of wealth. In Egyptian times women had artificial nails created from ivory, bone or gold. The idea was to make them look as expensive and as beautiful as possible. Longer nails can also give an impression of status. Women in the Far East who grow their nails to extraordinary lengths see them as a symbol of social standing. The longer the nails, the better you are treated. One of the main reasons why longer nails are associated with a higher class is because they show that the person has not had to work. This generally means that they would have had slaves to do their work for them, hence making them higher up in the social circle. Longer nails could never be a sign of hard work and so that is why artificial nails did become so popular.
How Artificial Nails Became Popular Today
It was America that really set off the popularity trend for artificial nails. They turned them into big business and these days artificial nails are sought after purely for cosmetic reasons. They were developed after inspiration came from the hearing aid and dental sectors. Adhesives and Polymers were experimented with to create artificial nails. This was done initially to make the nails stronger.
The artificial nails were moulded to look just like natural nails and the colours were perfected by using pigments which looked like the teeth and the skin. Originally a Polymers and Monomers mix was used to create the nails. It was applied over the natural nail and was extended onto a supporting material. It was left to harden and then it was shaped to look more like a natural nail. This was known as an acrylic artificial nail. So these days when you hear the term acrylic artificial nails, you know that they have been created using Polymer powder and Monomer liquid.
These days the most common type of artificial nails available are made from plastic. They come in all different sizes and they are quite cheap to purchase. They do not mean as much today as they used to and the techniques used to create them aren’t as technical as they used to be either. In the past even dental drills have been used to create acrylic nails as they were originally too hard to sculpt without tools. As time has gone on, better equipment has been designed to make creating artificial nails easier and quicker.
Overall artificial nails have had an interesting history and they used to be a lot more difficult to create than they are now.
