The perfume caters to our smell - olfactory sense. Our five senses are - touch, hearing, seeing, tasting and smelling. Corresponding to these are the five sense organs - the skin, the ears, the eyes, the tongue and the nostrils. Over and above these gross physical senses is another - the sixth sense that is something intangible which, leads to a feeling of wellbeing upon inhaling a delicate perfume.
In animals smell is very strong. The predators mark their territory with urine, which by the way each one has a distinctive odour. The pet in the house knows about our individual perfume more than we know ourselves. Perfumes have two functions, negative and positive. It covers up stale smell of sweat and on the other hand it exudes intoxicating fragrance.
Perfume is from Latin `per fume` meaning `through smoke`. It goes back 4000 years to Mesopotamia and Egypt before being improved upon by Romans and Arabs. In Europe it came in the 14th century. Hungary produced the first modern perfume in 1371. Renaissance Italy saw a burst of activity in perfume making. France became the centre of perfumes made from aromatic plants being grown from the 18th century in Grasse.
Man wants to pocket everything - from the diamond in dark caverns to pearls in ocean depths. The perfume is the victory of man over Nature - capturing the cream of her scent spread all around. The perfume is a mixture of oils, aroma and fixatives blended with solvents. The industry is shrouded in secrecy. Not everybody can understand the language of perfume making. Each perfume belongs to a family.
Perfume making starts with dilution of the oil with a solvent. Ethanol mixed with water is the most common solvent. Others are coconut oil, wax and jojoba. The increase or decrease of aromatic compounds relates to scent`s intensity and longevity. The amount of oil used varies from one perfume family to another.
From 1900 perfumes were categorized in groups - single floral, floral bouquet, ambery (admixture of scents from animals, flowers and woods), woody (mainly sandalwood and cedar), leather (honey, tobacco, wood and wood tars), chypre (cyprus) and fougere (fern).
Since 1945 perfumes have been divided into bright floral, green, oceanic, citrus and gourmand. From 1983 the fragrance-wheel is being used to simplify classification - floral, oriental, woody, fougere and fresh. Each are divided into subgroups.
Perfumes are metaphorically said to contain three musical notes - top, middle and base. Top notes are the scents that are immediately perceptible. Middle notes emerge after the first effect dissipates. The base note persists in combination with the middle after the top goes. Perfumes can be dissipated due to exposure to heat, light, oxygen etc.
The sources from which perfume is drawn are plants, animals and synthetic bases. Plants are the largest sources - its bark, fruits, flowers, leaves, twigs, roots, seeds and bulbs. In the animal world perfumes are extracted from whales, beavers, civets, honeybee and musk deer. Synthetic perfumes are cheaper but not quite so fine and delicate. In the case of the latter there are health risks connected to rashes, asthma and even cancer.
Perfume is extracted by soaking the raw material in a solvent for any length of time from few hours to months. In distillation the process of condensation is used, while in destructive-distillation method the raw stuff is heated directly. Squeezing and pressing are also common methods. Another method is absorbing the aroma in wax. Perfumes are part of industry and used for the food and chemical business.
The person who makes perfumes is known affectionately as The Nose. Next time you go to buy a bottle of perfume give a thought to the efforts that go behind creating that exquisite bottle for you!
Perfumery, that is the art of making perfume, is quite an ancient art that was first started in Mesopotamia as well as in Egypt, sometime during the 2nd millennium, BC.
During those days, perfumes were mostly made using spices such as coriander, almond, bergamot, etc and various kinds of herbs too. Surprisingly, they did not use flowers to make perfumes during the early days of perfume making. The use of flowers for perfume making was discovered by a Persian chemist and doctor, who first experimented with roses, to manufacture perfume. Rose water was an instant hit among the perfume users, owing to its more delicate nature, and since then there has been no looking back for perfumes using flowers.
However, nowadays with the commercialization of perfume making, and with the development in the technology, the production techniques have undergone a massive change. Perfume making has now become a job that requires great expertise and knowledge. Though most commercial perfume makers do not like to reveal the secret behind their perfumes, we know for sure that perfume comes from various sources, including plants (including flowers, fruits, leaves, seeds, resins, etc) , animals (such as musk, honey comb, civet, etc), and various other natural sources. These days the benefits of using genetically modified plants for perfume making is also being realized by manufacturers.
These days it is not very uncommon to find perfume makers using synthetic sources to make perfumes. Though there are very few manufactures who use synthetic chemicals to produce perfumes, they are nevertheless gaining popularity among the perfume lovers.
Though there are various methods of making perfumes, and each perfume producing unit adopts a different way suitable to their choice and style, some of the basic techniques still remain the same.
The first step comprises of understanding the organization of typical various ingredients present in the perfume oil. These ingredients are primarily divided into four categories on the basis of the specific roles they play. These include the primary scents, the modifiers, the blenders and the fixatives. Different primary scents as well as supporting ingredients may be found in the base, middle and top notes of fragrance.
In the next step, the fragrance oils then need to be blended with water and ethyl alcohol that have been aged in specific tanks for at least fourteen days, and well filtered off from all unnecessary sediments. These days most perfume manufacturing units, instead of building their perfumes from the `ground-ups`, prefer the use of bases for the same purpose, owing to the various benefits it provides.
However, once a perfume has been manufactured, it is difficult to understand its composition. This is obviously due to the presence of various kinds of oils that makes the structure of the perfume all the more complicated to break up and understand. However, an expert may use reverse engineering techniques to understand the nature of the perfumes. Reverse engineering is particularly helpful for understanding a perfume that is not too complex in nature. Nevertheless much also depends on the GC/MS equipments being used for the purpose. Customers as well as competitors often use this tool to understand the formula used in manufacturing a perfume.
Perfume making industry is a big one, employing a number of experts to experiment and devise new concepts for perfume making. One of the most amazing features of this industry is the maintenance of secrecy, and the hard work that is put into the making of each and every perfume, so that each bottle contains a unique combination in itself. Thus next time you spray perfume all over yourself, just recollect the hard work gone into it so that you keep smelling sweet the whole day long and say a silent thanks to the creator!!
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Roberto Sedycias has sinced written about articles on various topics from GPS Cell Phones, Writing and Movie Reviews. This article can also be accessed in portuguese language from the Article section of page Roberto Sedycias works as IT consult. Roberto Sedycias's top article generates over 1500000 views. to your Favourites.
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