THE CHARLESTON SILVER LADY

As beautiful today as they were when they were new over 100 years ago, these perfume bottles held the rare and tantalizing scents from far lands as well as the more ordinary rose water that many of remember from childhood.

I don’t know anyone who looks old perfume bottle who does not stantly hold it to their nose to see what scent still remains inside. We are compelled to do this by memory and the hopes of a familiar scent that takes us back to a particular place and time and quite often, a person.

I remember my Charleston grandmother always smelling of rose water and lavender. She had it in a bottle similar to this one sit ting in the middle of her dresser. She was of the Victorian era where the scent of a flower had intense meaning. Wearing rose water indicated a moral lady of good standing. She kept small bunches of lavender tucked in her dresser drawers. The distinct scent would follow her from place to place. The scent of roses and lavender will always remind me of her.

The idea of floral or citrus scents to mask odor is as old as the Romans.

The Victorian ‘tussie mussie, a bundle of highly-scented flowers held fast in a silver cone made just for them, was a lovely way to have pleasant scent near ones face when out and about in streets that may not smell so wonderful. Tiny bouquets of violets, roses, or nasturtium were often worn pinned to the body for this reason.

Flowers were worn by men and women with the result being a person who was nice to be close to. As the industrial revolution evolved , flowers, citrus and other plants were able to be decanted in oil and alcohol with the result being some of the first commercially available perfumes.

The most-desired perfumes

were from France, where the

iconic lavender fields grew

highly-prized extracted oil in the world of perfume. As fashion houses caught on to this trend of perfuming one’s body, a signature scent for each fashion house was created.

I still have a bottle of Chanel perfume that was my great-grandmother’s. It smells incredible. Just a dab on my wrist makes her come alive in my mind. The elongated, rectangular bottle with the iconic label and black screw cap will always mean “Gran” to me.

With the invention of specialty scents came the invention of specialty bottles by the iconic glass factories of the era, Gallé, Fabergé, Lalique, just to name a few. Bottles became all the rage at the turn of the century, with collectors gathering quantities of them in their dressers using special galleried dresser trays of equal beauty to gather them together.

Perfume bottles are just as desirable today as they once were. We are lucky to have the added attraction of their antique value and our personal memories to propel them as a desired collectible into the next century and beyond.

If you have items to be appraised, please contact Dawn by email. © 2018 The Charleston Silver Lady