PERFUMERY
PERFU’MERY, PE’RFUMES (Fr. perfum, from Lat. fumus, smoke or vapor), delicate fumes or smells. Perfumes are of three distinct classes when derived from plants, and there is a fourth class, which are of animal origin.
CLASS I.—These are the most ancient, and have been in use from the earliest period of which there is record. They consist of the various odoriferous gum-resins, which exude naturally from the trees which yield them; and to increase the produce, the plants are often purposely wounded. The most important are benzoin, olibanum, myrrh, and camphor. No less than 5000 cwt. of these together are annually imported into Britain. Gum-resins form the chief ingredients in ‘ Incense,’ (q. v.), and in Pastilles (q. v.)
CLASS II. are those perfumes which are procured by distillation. As soon as the Greeks and the Romans learned the use of the still, which was an invention imported by them from Egypt, they quickly adapted it to the separation of the odorous principle from the numerous fragrance-bearing plants which are indigenous to Greece and Italy. An essential oil or otto thus procured from orange-flowers bears in commerce to this day the name of Neroly, supposed to be so named after the Emperor Nero. Long before that time, however, fragrant waters were in use in Arabia. Odor-bearing plants contain the fragrant principle in minute glands or sacs; these are found sometimes in the rind of the fruit, as the lemon and orange; in others, it is in the leaves, as sage, mint, and thyme; in wood, as rosewood and sandal-wood; in the bark, as cassia and cinnamon; in seeds, as caraway and nutmeg. These glands or bags of fragrance may be plainly seen in a thin cut stratum of orange-peel; so also in a bay leaf, if it be held up to the sunlight, all the oil cells may be seen like specks. All these fragrant-bearing substances yield by distillation an essential oil peculiar to each; thus is procured oil of patchouly from the leaves of the patchouly plant, Pogostemon patchouly. a native of Burmah; oil of caraway, from the caraway seed; oil of geranium, from the leaves of the Geranium rosa; oil of lemon, from lemon-peel; and a hundred of others of more infinite variety.
The old name for these pure odoriferous principles was Quintessence. Latterly, they have been termed Essential Oils; they are now, in modern scientific works, often termed Ottos, from the Turkish word attar, which is applied to the well-known otto or attar of roses. See oil.
All the various essential oils or ottos are very slightly soluble in water, so that in the process of distillation the water which conies over is always fragrant. Thus, elder water, rose water, orange water, dill water are, as it were, the residue of the distillation for obtaining the several ottos. The process of Distillation (q. v.) is very simple; the fragrant part of the plant is put into the still and covered with water; and when the water is made to boil, the ottos rise along with the steam, are condensed with it in the pipe, and remain floating on the water, from which they are easily separated by decanting. In this way 100 pounds of orange, lemon, or bergamot fruit peel will yield about 10 ounces of the fragrant oil; 100 pounds of cedar wood will give about 15 ounces of oil of cedar; 100 pounds of nutmeg will yield 60 to 70 ounces of oil of nutmeg; 100 pounds of geranium leaves will yield 2 ounces of oil.
Every fragrant substance varies in yield of essential oil. The variety of essential oils is endless; "but there are a certain relationship among odors as among tints. The lemon-like odors are the most numerous, such as verbena, lemon, bergamot, orange, citron, citronella; then the almond-like odors, such as heliotrope, vanilla, violet; then spice odors, cloves, cinnamon, cassia. The whole may be classified into twelve well-defined groups. All these ottos are very soluble in alcohol, in fat, butter, and fixed oils. They also mix with soap, snuff, starch, sugar, chalk, and other bodies, to which they impart their fragrance.
The principal consumption of the various fragrant ottos is for scenting soap. Windsor soap, almond soap, rose soap, and a great variety of others, consist of various soaps made of oil and tallow, perfumed while in a melted state with the several named ottos or mixtures of them.
Though snuff is by no means so popular an article in the reign of Victoria as it was in Anne’s time, yet the increased population, and the extended exports to colonies, cause a production of scented snuff positively greater now than fifty years ago; and it is especially in demand in the fur countries of Northern Canada. There is a large consumption of fragrant essential oils in the manufacture of toilet powders; under the various names of rose powder, violet powder, &c., a mixture of starch and orris, differently scented, is in general demand for drying the skin of infants after the bath.
Precipitated chalk and powdered cuttle-fish bone, being perfumed with otto of roses, powdered myrrh, and camphor, become ‘ Dentrifice.’ The ottos of peppermint, lavender, rose, and others, are extensively used in scenting sweetmeats and lozenges.
More than 200,000 pounds weight of various ottos have been imported into Britain in one year, and valued at over £180,000; to this must be added at least one-third as much again distilled in England. Of the imported articles enumerated, oils of lemon and bergamot, from the Two Sicilies, reached 128,809 pounds, valued at £57,054.
class III.—These are the perfumes proper, such as are used for perfuming handkerchiefs, &c. Contrary to the general belief, nearly all the perfumes derived from flowers are not made by distillation, but by the processes of enfleurage and maceration. Although this mode of obtaining the odors from flowers has certainly been in practice for two centuries in the valley of the Var, in the south of France, it is only by the publication of a recent work* [*Art of Perfumery, by Septimus Piesse, Ph. D., 8vo. 50 cuts. Longman. 4th] that the method has been made generally known. The odors of flowers do not, as a general rule, exist in them as a store or in a gland, but are developed as an exhalation. While the flower breathes it yields fragrance, but kill the flower, and fragrance ceases. It has not been ascertained when the discovery was made of condensing, as it were, the breath of the flower during life; what we know now is, that if a living flower be placed near to grease, animal fat, butter, or oil, these bodies absorb the odor given off by the blossom, and in turn themselves become fragrant. If we spread fresh unsalted butter upon the bottom of two desert-plates, and then fill one of the plates with gathered fragrant blossoms of clematis, covering them over with the second greased plate, we shall find that after 24 hours the grease has become fragrant. The blossoms, though separated from the parent stem, do not die for some time, but live and exhale odor; which is absorbed by the fat. To remove the odor from the fat, the fat must be scraped off the plates and put into alcohol; the odor then leaves the grease and enters into the spirit, which thus becomes ’scent,’ and the grease again becomes odorless.
The flower fanners of the Var follow precisely this method on a very large scale, with but a little practical variation, with the following flowers—rose, orange, acacia, violet, jasmine, tuberose, and jonquil. The process is termed enfleurage. In the valley of the Var, there are acres of jasmine, of tuberose, of violets, and the other flowers named; in due season the air is laden with fragrance, the flower harvest is at hand. Women and children gather the blossoms, which they place in little panniers like fishermen’s baskets hung over the shoulders. They are then carried to the laboratory of flowers and weighed. In the laboratory the harvest of flowers has been anticipated. During the previous winter great quantities of grease, lard, and beef-suet have been collected, melted, washed, and clarified. In each laboratory there sire several thousand chassis (sashes), or framed glasses, upon which the grease to be scented is spread, and upon this grease the blossoms are sprinkled or laid. The chasse en -verve is, in fact, 41 frame with a glass in it as near as possible like a window-sash, only that the frame is two inches thicker, so that when one chasse is placed on another, there is a space of four inches between every two glasses, thus allowing space for blossoms. The illustration shows the chasse with grease and flowers upon it (fig. 1), also a pile of the same as in use. The flower blossoms are changed every day, or every other day, as is convenient in regard to the general work of the laboratory or flowering of the plants. The same grease, however, remains in the chasse so long as the particular plant being used yields blossoms. Each time the fresh flowers are put on, the grease is ‘ worked ‘—that is, serrated with a knife—so as to offer a fresh surface of grease to absorb odor. The grease being enfleuree in this way for three weeks or more—in fact, so long as the plants produce blossoms—is at last scraped off the chasse, melted, strained, and poured into tin canisters, and is now fit for exportation. Fat or oil is perfumed with these same flowers by the process of maceration; that is, infusion of the flowers in oil or melted fat. For this end, purified fat is melted in a bain marie, or warm bath, and the fresh blossoms are infused in it for several hours. Fresh flowers being procured, the spent blossoms are strained away, and new flowers added repeatedly, so long as they can be procured.
The bain marie is used in order to prevent the grease becoming too hot from exposure to the naked tire; so long as the grease is fluid, it is warm enough. Oil does not require to be warmed, but improved results are obtained when it is slightly heated.
Jasmine and tuberose produce best perfumed grease by enfleurage, but rose, orange, and acacia, give more satisfactory products by maceration; while violet and jonquil grease is best obtained by the joint processes—enfleurage followed by maceration. In the engraving a. chasse en fer (2, fig. 1) is shown; this is for enfleurage of oil. In the place of glass, the space is filled with a wire net; on which is laid a molleton, or thick cotton fabric—moleskin, soaked with oil; on this the flowers are laid, just as with solid grease. In due time—that is, after repeated changing the flowers —the oil becomes fragrant, and it is then pressed out of the moleskin cloth. Oil of jasmine, tuberose, &c., are prepared in this way. In order now to obtain the perfume of these flowers in the form used for scenting handkerchiefs, we have only to infuse the scented fat or oil, made by any of the above methods, in strong alcohol.
In extracting the odor from solid fat it has to be chopped up fine as suet is chopped, put into the spirit, and left to infuse for about a month. In the case of scented oil it has to be repeatedly agitated with the spirit. The result is, that the spirit extracts all the odor, becoming itself ‘ perfume,’ while the grease again becomes odorless; thus is procured the essence of jasmine, essence of orange flowers, essence of violets, and others already named, rose, tuberose, acacia, and jonquil.
It is remarkable that these flowers yield perfumes which, either separate or mixed in various proportions, are the types of nearly all flower odors; thus, when jasmine and orange flowers are blended, the scent produced is like sweet pea; when jasmine and tuberose are mixed, the perfume is that of the hyacinth. Violet and tuberose resemble lily of the valley. All the various bouquets and nosegays, such as ‘ frangipanni,’ ‘white roses,’ ’sweet daphne," are made upon this principle.
The commercial importance of this branch of perfumes may be indicated by the quantity of flowers annually grown in the district of the Var. Flower Harvest: orange blossoms, 1,475,000 lbs.; roses, 530,000 lbs.; jasmine, 100,000 lbs.; violets, 75,000 lbs.; acacia, 45,000 lbs.; geranium, 30,000 lbs.; tuberose, 24.000 lbs. jonquil, 5000 lbs.
class IV. Perfumes of animal origin.—The principal are Musk (q. v.), Ambergris (q. v.), Civet (q. v.), and Castor (q. v.) The aroma of musk is the most universally admired of all perfumes; it freely imparts odor to every body with which it is in contact. Its power to impart odor is such, that polished steel will become fragrant of it if the metal be shut in a box where there is musk, contact not being necessary.
In perfumery manufacture, musk is mixed with other odorous bodies to give permanence to a scent. The usual statement as to the length of time that musk continues to give out odor has been called in question. If fine musk be spread in thin layers upon any surface, and fully exposed to a changing current of air, all fragrance, it is said, will be gone in from six to twelve months.
Civet is exceedingly potent as an odor, and when pure, and smelled at in the bulk of an ounce or so, is utterly insupportable from its nauseousness; in this respect it exceeds musk. When, however, civet is diluted so as to offer but minute quantities to the olfactories, then its perfume is generally admitted; this is so with gas-tar; but the fragrant principle is the same as that breathed by the beautiful narcissus. Castor is in our day almost obsolete as a perfume.
The average importation of musk per annum for a period of five years was 9388 ounces, value £10,688; export 1578 ounces, value £2143; leaving for home-consumption every year 7810 ounces, value £8545. Average importation per annum for a similar period; otto of roses 1117 ounces, value £13,561; vanilla 3525 pounds, value £12,568; ambergris 225 ounces, value £225; civet 355 ounces, value £300; orris root 420 hundredweight.
The works on perfumes are very few; that of Madame Celnart, in the Libraire Roret, is most worthy of notice among the French; a translation of it has been made by Mr. C. Morflt of Philadelphia. In England. The British Perfumer, by C. Lilly (1822), was the only work of the kind published in England prior to the Art of Perfumery by S. Piesse (1855). See also Rimmel’s Book of Perfumes (1875).