The Making of Perfumed

The Making of Perfumed

The ancient Egyptians are generally credited with being the first people use perfumes, and perfume oils. The fragrances that they used came only from natural substances such as flowers, wood, aromatic plants and leaves, etc. The Egyptians are also credited with being the first to use fragrances and oils for skin care. They are also credited with being the first to use aromatic spices to preserve and give the body a pleasant fragrance at death.

Scented oil fragrances can be made from many substances. A finished scented oil product is a composition of a wide variety of substances, not all of which are used to produce scent. Perfume oils are a mixture of fragrant scented oils, aromatic compounds, fixatives, and solvents. Fragrance oils are used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant aroma. The reason for this is to evoke a pleasant reaction from either the person who applies the fragrance or others who will be effected by the aroma.

The ancient Greeks are credited with being the first to use stills to create and use liquid perfumes (not oils). They used herbs, spices, and flowers to create these first liquid perfumes. Oils were actually used long before liquid perfumes and colognes were even thought of.

The Arabs are credited with fine tuning the process of producing scented oils and excelled in using natural products to create perfume oils. In my opinion Arab perfumers still produce the best natural oil fragrances but Americans excel in producing the synthetic fragrances.

Some natural ingredients used to create fragrances are: 1) Plants such as cinnamon. 2) Flowers and blossoms such as rose and jasmine. 3) The rinds of citrus fruits. 4) Leaves such as lavender and patchouli. 5) Resins such as frankincense, myrrh, and pine. 6) Roots such as ginger, and 7) seeds and woods such as sandalwood. You can use your own imagination to list just about any compound that produces fragrance. We have given you a few examples here.

Some animal sources of fragrance are honeycomb, amber, which is derived from the sperm whale, and musk sacs which are used in musk fragrances. Most animal sources of fragrances have been replaced in modern times with synthetic compounds.

Fragrance must be extracted from the product which contains it. The traditional techniques include the use of heat, or solvents. They both leech the fragrance out over a period of time. Extracting fragrance may take weeks or months and must be done very carefully. Extracting fragrance always destroys some of the fragrance so it is a very delicate operation.

You can see that extracting and creating fragrance is a science and must be done very carefully. People will always use fragrance because it plays such an integral part of our everyday lives. The perfumer views his or her job of creating fragrance as a fine art. Finished products are hard to duplicate because there are so many ingredients and variations of technique that can be used. These are known only to the perfumer who has created the fragrance.