Caswell-Massey Dr. Hunter's Rosewater & Glycerine Hand Creme {Perfume Review} {Beauty Notes} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 12}

Dr. Hunter's Rosewater & Glycerine Hand Creme by Caswell-Massey - one of the oldest American brands founded by Dr. William Hunter in 1752 in Newport, Rhode Island - smells like the roses cultivated by our grand-mothers in their gardens, in the best sense possible of this representation. The scent of the cream is delicate, fresh, very realistic and refined enough to evoke the fruitiness of Nahema by Guerlain; in short, it is an impressively scented hand cream. So much so that more than a good hand cream it can double up as a fragrance cream as the perfume feels intense enough to fulfill this purpose.

We noticed that it is best to apply this cream like one would a mask rather than a cream that would need to be rubbed in. The rose perfume just smells much better when left alone as much can be......

Using Dr. Hunter's Rose & Glycerine Creme as a mask for the hands is in fact one of the two recommended usages.

Here is what one can read on the package regarding the mask tip,

"For exceptional results, use as your grandmother would have - apply Dr. Hunter's Rosewater and Glycerine Creme quite heavily, and then slip on sleeping gloves. Morning will reveal hands as soft and tender as those remembered caressing your childhood cheek."

The packaging is lovely, Victorian in style, with a "Secrets Worth Knowing ™" section offering an advice from Dr. Hunter. No. 49 is on the sense of touch.

The immediate beauty results of applying the cream are that one's hands feel ultra soft and smell as if they had macerated at leisure in a bowl of rosewater and rose petals. The cream is said to be perfumed with a "rose fragrance" on top of the rosewater, almond oil, shea butter, etc.

Our understanding of the potential "drying effects" of glycerine is that this happens when the weather or the environment is particularly dry so that then the glycerine tends to pump up humidity where it finds it, under the skin, while it tends on the other hand to act as a magnet for it if there is enough of it in the atmosphere. These effects are explained by a chemist in The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr.

A 2.5 oz tube retails for $12. Currently they offer 3 mini 0.5 oz tubes for $5. A pair of sleeping gloves retails for $6.