http://www.mindspring.com/~tbennett/perfumes/ancient_perfumes2.html
http://tinyurl.com/3o8sw About.com’s
links to perfume history sites
http://www.perfumes.com/eng/history.htm
In France, and a few other areas of the world, notably India, there
are still perfumers who make fragrances “in the old way”, rejecting the
synthetic chemicals so prevalent in mainstream perfumery.
In history, as now, the natural perfumer would extract the fragrant molecules by
infusion, tincturing, enfleurage, or distillation. To make an infusion start by
placing the fragrant material in oil and either heating the oil or placing the
container in the sun, until the oil takes on the fragrance of the source.
Tincturing required an alcohol base. The alcohol could be wine, or something
stronger, like brandy or vodka. Again, the materials were placed in the alcohol
until the liquid became fragrant.
Enfleurage is a method of scent extraction perfected by the French. Trays of
animal fat were the receiving media for delicate flowers like jasmine, gardenia
and tuberose. Usually, the flowers had to be replaced numerous times before the
fat became saturated with the scent. Then, the fat was “washed” with an
alcohol to separate the scent from the fat. Distillation, the art of placing the
plant material over steam, and separating the “oil” of the plant from the
water constituents, was typically done on a large, industrial scale, and, on a
smaller scale, some home distillation took place.
Throughout most of Western history, perfumes tended to be “one note”, i.e.,
the wearer had to choose between rose, jasmine, sandalwood, patchouli, etc. In
India, the user could choose from glorious attars, which are hydro distilled
aromatics co-distilled with sandalwood or cedarwood (typically). Some attars
were just one aromatic combined with the sandalwood (e.g. rose, jasmine), others
were a carefully constructed formula of flowers, roots, woods and resins. When
the hydro distillation of fragrant materials was done into a dry receptacle, it
was called a ruh. For more information on ruhs and attars, see:
http://www.chandnichowk.com/attar.htm
http://www.habibintl.com/indian_attars.htm
Another source for wonderful information on the fragrant offerings of India is
the collection of newsletters of Christopher McMahon on his Website: http://whitelotusaromatics.com