Lisa Eldridge's 5,000-Piece Vintage Makeup Collection Takes Up Residence in a London Museum

The holdings stretch across centuries and continents, from an ancient Egyptian kohl mixing palette to Chinese opera makeup rich in lead, beauty packs taken from the first-class cabins of the Titanic, and colored eye shadows sold by Miss Selfridge and CoverGirl in the 1980s and 1990s.

The project dates to the 1990s, when Eldridge bought a box of old Biba makeup at Portobello Road Market for five pounds. That first purchase set the pattern for a collection that has grown steadily since.

Acquisitions have come from U.S. estate sales, where she has picked up blushes, eye creams and color palettes, as well as paints and pigments from Shiseido and other brand archives. Old Hollywood pieces, including Marlene Dietrich's powder compact and Marilyn Monroe's lipsticks, were bought online, at auction or through a network of dealers she trusts.

The archive reaches beyond cosmetics. It includes what she describes as a pristine pair of clippers used to bob women's hair during the flapper era, and a tube of cherry toothpaste made by a brand that carried Queen Victoria's endorsement at the time.

Eldridge, a makeup artist who also runs her own beauty brand, frames the collection as a record of human behavior as much as a catalog of products. "Makeup is human history. It reflects our need to paint, to be creative, to be expressive," she said.

The museum sits inside her London studio, where the items serve as a reference library spanning anthropology, philosophy and sentiment.