Antique British Betel Nut Toothpaste Apothecary Jar with Gilded Border Kikuyu portrait with a small ink smear

with a small ink smear below the pipe

A total delight to find this at Brimfield--a quintessentially Victorian set of 36 glass microscope slides

brush side up

and a student at Konvikt Rottweil in Germany

with just light wear/aging to the metal

Antique British Betel Nut Toothpaste Apothecary Jar with Gilded Border Kikuyu portrait with a small ink smearI love these old late 19th c. transfer printed porcelain apothecary jars, most of them made for toothpaste, which, by the 1880s, most pharmacists were making formulating their own recipes for. This one, for Bell's Betel Nut Toothpaste (the betel nuts, also known as areca nuts, presumably imported from Southeast Asia) was produced by Ferris and Co in Bristol, England, "Chemists to the Queen"and is fairly rare in featuring a gilded border. 3 3 8" in