A smile worthy of a crown
Ashcroft
Dental House · Bloomsbury · Since nineteen-ten
The finest smile is a British one.
Chapter I · 1881
A boy named
Arthur
Born in London, eighteen eighty-one. The city was still gas-lit. He would live long enough to dislike chalk, and to found a house that outlasted him.
Before the house existed
Dr. Shirley
Harcourt
A physician-chemist of the London School of Medicine for Women. They were married in 1907 at St George’s, Bloomsbury — before there was a shop, before there was a tin. The house began as a marriage. The formula came after.
Married 1907 · Then the work began
Autumn 1910
On a wet street
in Bloomsbury
They opened a narrow shop. Rain on the glass. The door opened at the same hour whether anyone came or not. Arthur was twenty-nine. Shirley kept the notes.
The chemist
Arthur Ashcroft
A dispensing chemist with an unreasonable dislike of chalk-based tooth powders. The powders of the day scoured more than they cleaned. He intended to remake them — and to put nothing in a tin he would not put in his own mouth.
1910 — 1914
Four winters
The powders of the day scoured more than they cleaned.
- Grinding
- Washing
- Testing
Until he arrived at a soft paste of English peppermint and clove oil. He wrote it into the ledger as Formula No. 7.
A Tuesday
Ninepence
9d
He sold the first tin on a Tuesday for ninepence. Chalk-free. Soft. The shop’s customers began asking for the tin by its picture before they asked for it by name.
Formula No. 7 · Improved twice
Their daughter
Gladys
gave it a face
She grew up among the ledgers. When her hand was sure enough, she engraved the label herself, set the name in a hand she cut by eye, and pressed each tin with a fleur seal in red wax. Ornament, in this house, is earned — never bought in.
The house rule
Nothing goes in the tin that we would not put in our own mouths. Nothing goes on the tin that we did not draw ourselves.
Arthur & Shirley Ashcroft · from the first winter
Chapter II · 1924
From Edinburgh
to Bath
By nineteen twenty-four the fleur was on chemists’ shelves the length of the country. The tin travelled by its picture. The formula did not.
The second generation
Edward Harcourt
Ashcroft
Their son took the house in 1960. Spearmint became the first new flavour in fifty years. Navy and cream were fixed as house colours. The Blue Box was born. The formula was not rewritten. It was made quieter, and more sure of itself.
1960 · The Blue Box
Chapter III · 1999
DAMU Ltd.
takes the name
After the second generation, DAMU Ltd. of London acquired the brand name. Not a factory. The name, the ledgers, the original cuts. They did not put a tin on a shelf. First they went to work on themselves.
1999 — 2010
Eleven quiet
years
Laboratories. Archives. The identity redrawn from Gladys’s engravings — not replaced. Nano-hydroxyapatite. Clinical specialisation. They would not return the name to the shelf until the science was ready.
A century, then a return
2010 · The name
on the shelf again
A hundred years after Arthur opened the door, DAMU brought Ashcroft back — with modern science inside the old rule. Specialised pastes. A second century. The finest smile is still a British one.
One formula, improved twice
The range · 75 ml · Returned 2010
Nine pastes.
Four colours. One house.
Choose a tin. It will open as Gladys would have wanted — slowly, and in full.
Purity, perfected
Ashcroft
Dental House
14 Museum Street
London WC1A 1JS
+44 20 7946 0110
Chalk-free since 1910 · Sealed by hand in London