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guerlain muguet limited edition bottles

Vintage perfume vessels & fragrance bottles from history and across civilizations.

For thousands of years, humanity has shaped the materials around the fragrant essences of herbal plants to keep them contained. In ancient workshops, they kneaded and fired clay. Potters in Greece and Rhodes molded terracotta into the shapes of owls, frogs, and lion heads. Along the Mediterranean's southern shores, Egyptian artisans crafted faience perfume bottles shaped like hedgehogs. In the 13th century BC, Nefertari's ointments were kept in round boxes with wood details.

During the Roman era, glassmaking changed production methods. Artisans blew molten sand over a fire to design vials shaped like fish and dates. They engraved delicate white figures onto blue glass. In a Pompeii mural, we see a woman carefully pouring liquid from one of these slender bottles. Over time, perfume vessels weren't just tabletop objects anymore. In 18th-century Europe, they were attached directly to clothing. English and German craftsmen worked silver and gold into flasks shaped like hearts, daggers, and skulls. Women tied them to their waists with metal chains.

Materials took shape based on geography. In India, gold vessels were encrusted with rubies. In Chinese workshops, jade and porcelain were intricately carved into miniatures. In the 20th century, factories in Czechoslovakia and France switched to industrial molding techniques. Designers pressed glass into the shape of a starry sky or a coiled snake. Malachite green and black Art Deco designs filled shop windows.

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Poster advertising perfumes by Soyuzchimexport, Moscow (c. 1950). Artwork by M. Shenker. Soyuzchimexport (Soviet Chemical Export) was the state foreign trade organization in the Soviet Union in charge of exporting perfumes, colognes, and essential oils.