Perfume Pilgrim

On my to do list is to visit as many perfume museums as I can find. On my recent trip to Paris, I visited the two Fragonard museums, though the Scribe one was closed for renovation. On Tuesday I explored the hidden private museum of Floris in London. In January I had planned to visit the perfume collection at the Harris Museum up North in Preston, but the room is being renovated and so is the website. The perfume collection should be open again in March. This has one of the largest perfume bottle collections in the country. Usually, the Cotswold Perfumery also do tours of their factory in an 18th century building, but due to flooding their shop and tours are closed till the end of March. The Cotswold perfumery also hold regular perfume making workshops.

Here are some pictures from the Fragonard museums. The Rue de Scribe one is housed in a beautiful mansion. The objects are carefully arranged with special lighting, they seem so covetable. Crystal, glass and printed boxes, more like treasure chests, sit side by side with gilt and ormolu finishes. Cherubs, flowers, gilding and gold and brown liquids offer a glimpse of the luxury that perfume is and aspires to.  There are also small collections of antique bottles in several antique markets and arcades in London. In Burlington Arcade, several of the antique dealers have perfume bottles, some are even priced over £20,000 pounds.

My dream perfume organ. Row upon glorious row of amber flacons and robust stoppers. An artist palette with a rainbow of colours and textures. Little glass soldiers making formations and saluting and contents just waiting to be set free. A perfumers organ is closer to  a dictionary or a thesaurus, where words or notes can be strung together to create the most prosaic poetry or blended compositions. The perfumer, like the organist in a cathedral knows how to read and play the music to create a sense of the sublime.

Equipment for Distillation. Shiny copper vats that can still be used today. On a trip to Mauritius last year I visited a fragrance garden that was distilling fresh vetiver in copper vats. The vetiver was growing on the nearby hills surrounded by sugarcane. Fresh water distilled vetiver is sweeter and smoother than the vetiver I recognize in most men’s fragrances. No matter how much I begged or bargained, I could not purchase a single drop of the freshly distilled oil as it was destined for someone else. But I was able to inhale deeply over the oil gathered at the end of the rubber hose…

An old perfume bottle. This bottle is coloured a lurid lime green.

Below are some pictures from the Floris Museum collection. Firstly, here is a letter written in 1853 by Florence Nightingale thanking  for the “nosegays of beautifull sweet smelling roses which have cheered my sick bed.” The collection here is truly charming and I deeply appreciate being given rare access to this hidden chamber. Thankyou Floris.

If you wish to see these in person,  you are welcome to join me on the Mayfair Memoire tour. More on the meeting with the bespoke perfumer at Floris next time.