NOW WASH YOUR HANDS [505]

From S.C. Johnson's website - free public tours are available

There was me thinking that the word combination “cellar door” was cited as the most beautiful in the English language by T.S. Eliot, a poet, when it turned out to have been J.R.R. Tolkien, in his position as a philologist, in his lecture “English and Welsh” in October 1955.

As far as I can find, it is not recorded what either of them thought of “Swarfega”. A portmanteau of a local term for oil or grease, and a corruption of the word “eager”, Swarfega originated from Derbyshire as a hand cleaner that could remove heavy-duty dirt without risking your skin. 

 

There is a story that Swarfega was originally intended, as a cleaner for silk stockings, much like Listerine was originally used as a floor cleaner before bad breath was recontextualised as ”halitosis” - it is true that the company that made Swarfega was named Deb, short for “debutante”, but nylon stockings made it to market before Swarfega, and personal experience of the body scrub-like consistency of Swarfega means you wouldn’t use it on anything delicate.

 

The reason any of this came to mind is, well, beyond me - I must have been daydreaming, and the mellifluous tone of “Swarfega” came to mind for no reason at all, inevitably leading to my wondering what the etymology of such a word could be.

 

I feel my thoughts move faster when I am daydreaming, perhaps from exerting little to no control over them, for as soon as I found out that the Deb group had been sold in 2015 to S.C. Johnson, a family company - all their TV ads end the same way - that led me to find out they are otherwise known as Johnson Wax, meaning the ultimate headquarters of Swarfega are now found in the famous Johnson Wax Headquarters building, famously designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - now I am interested.

 

What I knew about the headquarters, a US National Historic Landmark where S.C. Johnson continues to be based, that uses brick as red as the Royal Albert Hall, was that Wright did not include windows due to late payments, using skylights instead – this one turns out to be untrue, more the result of preventing it from looking like a traditional building – and that one of the mushroom-shaped supports, columns that continue tapering to the ground, had to be built in order to be destroyed, in order to prove how much weight they could truly support.

 

Looking into the building’s design further, I am surprised by the open-plan arrangement of the “Great Workroom”, ahead of its time for its 1939 opening date, the effectiveness of the Pyrex tube-based skylights, and the display of artistry at every stage, right down to the bespoke clerks’ desks and chairs - I would like one of each. Every single part of the building could have been made more conventionally, but the consideration of whether everything could be designed a different way, with the intent of energising staff, was refreshing.

I felt energised myself by seeing these pictures, and it was down to having “Swarfega” come to mind. It pays to let your mind wander sometimes.