Last week we featured branded perfume bottles from QBO sales; this week it’s unbranded bottles for whatever scent you fancy. Perfumes are oils derived from botanical, animal or synthetic sources blended into an alcohol base. The greater the concentration, the stronger the scent and the higher the price. Scents are classified as Body Mist or Body Spray at 1%-5%; Eau de Cologne: 4%-8%; Eau Fraîche: 5%-12%; Eau de Toilette: 8%-15%; Eau de Parfum: 12%-22%; Perfume or Extrait: 15%-30%. At 1-2%, Aftershave is like body mist but with skin-soothing emollients. Strictly observant Muslims do not use alcohol-based perfume, preferring oil or water-based scents and rose or orange-flower water. As mentioned last week, the distinction between scents and medicines is new; in centuries before we understood micro-organisms, posies were held beneath the nose to protect against “miasmas” in the air, while the “beaks” of 1600s plague doctors’ masks were early respirators stuffed with ambergris, camphor, cloves, carnations, juniper, lavender, myrrh, mint and roses held in place by vinegar-soaked sponges.
These 3 vintage bottles are given the science-fiction sounding name of “Atomizers”. They won’t vaporize you, but they do produce vapor! To work an atomizer, hold the bottle in one hand, aim the nozzle at yourself and squeeze the rubber bulb with your other hand, et voila! Atomizers exploit the Bernoulli principle, in which air rushing through a tube has a lower pressure than the surrounding atmosphere. Pressure inside the bottle created by squeezing the bulb forces perfume up into the tube’s low-pressure air stream, causing it to exit the nozzle as mist. These atomizers were made in the U.S. by DeVilbiss, which has produced them since the early 1900s. While our examples are plain, DeVilbiss also made fancy atomizers with silver-plated fittings and Art Deco molded glass. Scents are not the only application for mist-producing technology; DeVilbiss currently makes automotive clearcoat spray guns for car detailing and, ever versatile, they also make medical nebulizers that turn liquid medication into mist to be inhaled via mask.
The flacon here is the most expensive bottle, having been created from colored glass rods (canes) fused, stretched and swirled into delicate stripes as the vessel was blown. Its walls are thick, making it stable and heavy for its size, a tiny masterpiece. The 4 fragile hand-blown bottles have tall stoppers that extend down into them to become daubers for applying scent. The tops are held on only by gravity. The rosy tint, tiny botanical decorations and gilding were all painted on the clear glass. They were distributed in the U.S. by Royal Limited and were made in Egypt, one of the earliest civilizations to manufacture both glass bottles and perfume.
Excavation of 4,000 year-old perfume factories in the ancient Egyptian city of Thmuis unearthed containers with traces of two ancient perfumes, “Mendesian” and “Metopian”, made of myrrh, olive oil, cinnamon, and cardamom. Another 4,000 year-old perfume factory excavated on the Greek island of Cyprus also yielded alabaster bottles containing perfume residue formulated from almond, anise, bay, bergamot, coriander, parsley, pine, and rosemary. A 4,500 year-old Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet has possibly the oldest written perfume recipe, consisting of rose, saffron, musk and amber. Scholars who recreated the scent now hope to manufacture the “Sun of Civilization” fragrance commercially. And lastly, in case you wondered whatever happened to the photos of the L’Air Du Temps ‘manage a troi’ and the ‘Delicious’ of Beverly Hills tiny jaguar perfume bottle mentioned last week, oops, our apologies. Here they are:
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!