History of Perfume

The Stone age is where the familiar meaning of perfume was passed down through the ages. “To pass through smoke.” Perfume was simply burning various woods and organic matter. The ash was often mixed with fats and used as medicine or in rituals. The Egyptians were the most sophisticated practitioners.

Stone of various kinds was a widely used building material. As their craftsmanship became more refined they went from using sometimes elaborately carved clay jugs for everything to stone for precious things. Beautiful examples of alabaster, calcite, lapis and other stone perfume containers still exist.

The Neolithic age saw the ending of nomadic life. Cultivation was beginning. Plants were always tied to religious beliefs and healing but now with fields of valuable plants, they could make more use of them. They started expressing oils from plants by pressing.

Perfume incense is used to scent cloth, homes, temples, and was even added to drinks to give them more flavor. Incense burners are considered some of the best examples of furniture design from this era.

The world's oldest surviving text from 2000 B.C. is a list of medicinal and perfumery prescriptions. Along with meandering descriptions of how those things fit into larger society and religious practices. They burned incense on street corners. The preferred method of extracting essences was enfleurage.

With the advent of the Bronze Age, it became common to mine, smelt, and alloy copper, tin, and bronze. Distillation begins to be investigated. Perfumes are stored in metal flasks that are at times highly decorated and even gorgeously encrusted in gems.

The Iron Age saw improvements in boating technologies. Iron, metals and raw ingredients of all kinds are shipped around the world. Distillation and tubing improve making the process practical to produce perfume oil.

Shipping reached the Arabian Peninsula. The world had wider access to woods, stems, berries, gums and resins and the techniques the Arabians developed to deal with these special substances.

The Roman Empire was a voracious consumer of scented products and their precursors. They would scent dogs, horses, soles of the feet and walls of buildings. This is partially due to the roman penchant for roads and shipping and the fact that Arab perfumeries improved the distilling process so that the world had access to new ingredients like musk, rose, and amber.

The fall of Rome was blamed on their decadence and with the advent of Christianity; the use of incense is limited to religious rituals. Royal courts of course still had perfumers.

Distillation comes into its own. The perfume industry began production in Grasse. France gains a reputation as a cultured country.

Queen Elizabeth of Hungary is said to have recovered after smelling a fragrant remedy from a monk. “Hungary water” as it was called during the Medieval Age spread through Europe where it was lavishly produced during the Renaissance with a myriad of variation.

Queen Elizabeth of England required all public places to be scented. It was considered a woman’s domain to scent their selves. They carried a pomander, a decorated ball of cloth filled with dried flowers and spices. Perfume smoke was also used with billows to scent rooms and closets. Scent was used to mask the smell from the tanning process of leather accessories such as gloves, handbags, and jackets.

Plague doctors are notorious for their eerie leather bird-beaked masks which they stuffed with perfumed rags and dried flowers.

Perfumery becomes a bonafide worldwide commercial endeavor during the Industrial Revolution. With more production capability many people who had never been able to before enjoyed luxury goods. Not just for royals anymore!

Including perfume, perfumed paper, textiles, and the illustrious gloves. Also handkerchiefs, necklaces, makeup, garters, hair powder, bath salts, and oils. If it could be scented it was. Many women received large perfume filled decorated bottles as part of vanity sets for wedding gifts from their groom.

Most perfumes were produced in small locales. Only 2 trade names existed Coty, and Yardley; making scented waters for wealthy patrons.

Organic chemistry advanced enough to create synthetic scents. The Modern Age exploded from this point using cheaper synthetics for products allowing for a profusion of brands and corporations.

Ethanol became easier and more economic to produce. So it became the prime solvent instead of fats or oils.

Scents are mass produced to spec for every product. Including processed food, drinks, and personal care.

20th Century scientific advances in a sundry of fields lead to many innovative processes and discoveries. Leading to a blurring in the divide between synthetic and natural ingredients.

Is a chemical natural or synthetic if secondary chemicals are harvested through genetic engineering? Is it natural or synthetic if the utterly flexible terpenoids are cracked open to reveal yet more molecules? There are other processes like fermenting engineered yeast to form novel scents.

Even the old standbys of distillation and expressing are getting face-lifts. Distillation with solvents and cold. Expressing with micro-mechanical techniques and mutated hybrid citrus.

The hydrocarbon industry has contributed with unique solvents and processes used in post chemical and post waste processing.

Lest we think that Mother Nature is out of secrets; it has recently been discovered that the scorned Durian may contain as many as 3,000 new parts of scent.

No matter what the future holds Perfumery remains a creative sensory journey full history and magic.