Coming soon

A catalog for Black American beautification

Nothing on this page is for sale. There is no cart and no price. No card is taken for a product. See an open time, request it, and pay the deposit and any tip on the request page. Sign-in is not required for that.

Request a time Open your client profile

This selection belongs to LUSTRA GROUP. September’s Locs is one studio on it. The shelves will open on your client profile. Changes and refunds stay there. This page names the builders and shows art that is already in the public domain, so there is something to look at while the shelves are empty.

Art in the room

Six works. Each one is public domain in the United States. The catalog will keep adding to this wall.

An elder teaches a child the banjo in a warm interior — Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Public domain.

A woman standing beside still water and trees — Edward Mitchell Bannister, Woman Standing near a Pond. Public domain.

A river bend with trees and a pale sky — Robert S. Duncanson, Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River, 1851. Public domain.

A printed advertisement for Madam C. J. Walker hair preparations — Madam C. J. Walker preparations. Library of Congress. Public domain.

A portrait of a young girl in a pale dress — Joshua Johnson, Portrait of a Girl. Public domain.

A studio portrait of the sculptor Edmonia Lewis — Henry Rocher, portrait of Edmonia Lewis, about 1870. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain.

Named for the builders

These are scientists, engineers, and makers from the public record. A shelf is not open under any of these names yet.

Madam C. J. Walker

She manufactured and sold hair preparations and built the company that carried her name.

Norbert Rillieux

Multiple-effect vacuum evaporator for refining sugar. U.S. Patent 3,237, granted in 1843.

Lewis H. Latimer

A carbon filament that could be manufactured and would hold.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

A machine that lasted shoes. U.S. Patent 274,207, granted in 1883.

Elijah McCoy

An automatic oil cup so engines could be lubricated while they ran.

Granville T. Woods

An induction telegraph for trains that were moving.

Frederick McKinley Jones

Portable refrigeration so food and medicine could travel cold.

Mark E. Dean

Patents on the personal computer, including the bus other cards plug into.

Daniel Hale Williams

Provident Hospital, and an early successful open-heart operation in 1893.

Patricia E. Bath

The Laserphaco probe, a device for removing cataracts.

Percy L. Julian

Medicinal compounds synthesized from plant sterols, including cortisone.

Charles R. Drew

Large-scale blood plasma storage and the blood-bank system built on it.

George Washington Carver

Crop science and new uses for Southern crops.

Thomas L. Jennings

A dry-scouring process. He received a U.S. patent in 1821.

Sarah E. Goode

A folding cabinet bed for small rooms. U.S. patent granted in 1885.

Alice H. Parker

A gas furnace with zones that could be regulated apart from one another. Patent granted in 1919.

Otis Boykin

Electronic control devices, including a control unit used in the pacemaker.

George Carruthers

The far-ultraviolet camera that flew on Apollo 16.

Lonnie G. Johnson

Thermoelectric energy research, funded by an invention of his own.

Marie Van Brittan Brown

A home security system with a camera. U.S. Patent 3,482,037, granted in 1969.

Lewis Temple

A toggle harpoon head used in the whale fishery. He did not patent it.

Matthew Henson

Navigator of the 1909 Arctic expedition.

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

Recorded as the first permanent non-Indigenous settler of what became Chicago.

The roll is not closed. Supplies and product offerings are still coming soon.