Antiques: After the perfume is gone, you still have the bottle

Mike Rivkin

Special to The Desert Sun

While it's true that good things often come in small packages, it's also true that the package can last longer than the thing. Such is the case with perfume bottles. Indeed, the whole idea of glass bottles can be traced back to ancient Egypt and the need to store and carry perfume. The old world was rife with vile smells, and the invention of Lysol was still 3,000 years away. If that isn't a pedigree to boast about, I don't know what is. Let's take a whiff.

In fact, perfume was heavily entwined in early Egyptian culture. It was widely used in religious rituals and its safekeeping served as an impetus for the invention of glass in about 1000 BC. Over time, the use of perfume spread throughout the Middle East and Europe. In Greece, perfumes were stored in heavily ornamented vessels while the Romans thought that certain scents were aphrodisiacs, a fact that did not go unnoticed by later entrepreneurs. With the invention of blown glass by the Syrians around the time of Christ, the modern perfume bottle was in sight.

Between then and now, the use of perfume ebbed and flowed, declining as Christianity waned and then increasing in popularity throughout the Middle Ages and especially in the Islamic world. As the spice trade flourished during the 7th and 8th centuries, merchants introduced perfumes into a range of new markets. In Italy where glassblowing had been embraced early on as an art form, beautifully made perfume vials and ampoules became showpieces of the glassblower's art.

Jumping ahead 1,000 years, perfume bottles reached something of an apex in the 18th century when artisans of all types took to their design. Crystal, porcelain and precious metals were the materials of choice, often ornamented with polished stones or jewels of considerable value. The invention of the atomizer in 1870 furthered the utility of such bottles, prompting the appearance a few years later of the industry's two modern giants: Baccarat and Lalique. That their bottles contained perfume was something of an afterthought. Lalique and Baccarat designs were meant to serve as central showpieces in a woman's boudoir, the ultimate symbols of taste and beauty. Those names still resonate today.

Since the dawn of the 20th century, such cultural icons as Salvador Dali, Carolina Herrera, Jean Patou and Nina Ricci have all made passes at perfume bottle design. Advertisements for perfume, so ubiquitous during this holiday season, cannot convey scent through any form of modern communication so the bottles must serve as placeholders for all the wonderful things their contents promise.

By some estimates, as many as 50,000 perfume bottles are produced in the USA each day from an expansive range of makers. As for vintage bottles, they are widely collected even by many prominent art museums. Prices remain reasonable for all but the rarest examples and antique galleries like ours offer a dazzling array. It's a sweet-smelling category for collectors young and old.

Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are longtime residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he's the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Saturdays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at info@silverfishpress.com.