Indigo Perfumery welcomes the Mini Museum of Perfume History’s traveling exhibit, Unguent, Unguentarium and U, on Thursday, August 13th.
While preparing for this fun and educational exhibit, we decided to explore the history of perfume. This journey led us to Pompei and the story its frescoes revealed. The Pompei friezes are a bit younger than the perfume bottles in our exhibit, but give us insight into the importance of perfume in ancient times.
Who would have guessed that after the production of woolen clothing, perfume production was the second most important industry in Pompei?
Perfumes have been used since the dawn of civilization. The first recorded perfumer was Tapputi, often referred to as the world’s first chemist living four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia. She reportedly used a still to distill natural materials such as balsam and myrrh.
The Egyptians famously used perfumes to anoint and cleanse, even including them in burials tombs for the after-life. In India, the creation of attars has been known for thousands of years. Cypress was the home of the oldest known perfumery, also 4,000 years ago.
Natural materials were exclusively utilized, placed in an oil (usually olive oil) base. Myrrh, cinnamon, frankincense, balsam, galbanum, labdanum, saffron and cassia were some of the ingredients used.
In Pompei, the perfume industry’s key component was the strongly scented flower of the region, the rose. Its precious oil was obtained by distilling the petals in horseshoe-shaped furnaces. (Roses and other local flowers in the Campania region were also used for creating garlands.) Other materials were often costly, having to be brought in from far places.
Perfumes were usually reserved for the wealthy due to their high costs of production. Through excavations and testing, it has been discovered that their personal gardens were large, well organized and well tended. The gardens contained the botanicals used in making perfumes, unguents, and flower garlands.
The famous House of Vetti’s triclinium (dining room) contains detailed friezes of cherubs compromising nine masterpieces, depicting among other things, picking flowers and making garlands, baking bread and harvesting grapes.
Pictured below are the three scenes from the perfume related frieze in which the cherubs are manufacturing and purchasing perfumes.
The bottles used to hold the perfumes (unguents) and ointments are called unguentariums. They were created out of blown glass and are often found encrusted with sediment.
The exhibit at Indigo will feature three Roman perfume bottles from the first century A.D.,
typically used to contain ointments (unguents), cosmetics, perfume, balsam, and fragrant oils.