A Scents-able Woman
BY NORM POWERSAs long as perfume has been part of human culture — and that’s a very long time, indeed — there have been containers in which to store it. Ancient Egyptians used stone and alabaster jars. Romans crafted glass containers with brass caps. Greeks used decorated earthenware vases in the shapes of animals. Perfume containers in our own time may take a back seat to the elaborate marketing surrounding the essences they contain, but that makes them no less interesting to people like Kathleen Byrne, whose collection of some 500 perfume bottles occupies a carefully tended corner in her Hendersonville home.
“They remind me of lots of things,” Kathleen says of her collection. “They remind me of when I was a little girl, going shopping with my mother and seeing what was in the drawers of makeup departments. And my father used to give me perfume every Christmas when I was a teenager.”
Kathleen started collecting perfume bottles in earnest some 20 years ago, while she was an antiques dealer in New York and began looking for a specialty subject. After visits to her shop by one or two bottle dealers, she began reading up on the subject and visiting antiques fairs. Soon, her collection began to take shape. Although Kathleen’s collection contains European designs by such lofty names as Baccarat and Lalique, the majority of her bottles are American in origin. “The French get most of the credit,” Kathleen says, “and bottles designed by Americans don’t get the attention they should.”
Like any artifact, perfume bottles reflect cultural trends. Before the 20th century, women’s perfume containers were highly personal items carried to the local druggist to be filled from large, utilitarian bottles. Inspired by the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th century, these personal bottles often bore floral motifs and were highly prized works of art passed from mother to daughter. Baccarat produced a bottle in the shape of a fleur de lis, for example, now highly sought after by collectors.
The commercialization of fashion that arrived at the turn of the last century made perfume a mass-market accessory for designer clothing, prompting Coty to introduce the first over-the-counter, pre-filled perfume bottle in 1902. When American soldiers began returning from World War I bearing exquisitely designed perfume bottles from Paris as gifts, the trend accelerated to produce designs conceived by artists like Salvador Dali, jewelers like Van Cleef and Arpels, and couturiers like Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli.
Perfume bottles may seem like an arcane antiques subculture, but there are enough interested collectors to form themselves into the International Perfume Bottle Association (www.perfumebottles.org), which claims more than 2,000 members and publishes Perfume Bottle Quarterly. Kathleen is a member of the Southeast’s Atlanta-based Peachtree Chapter, and traveled last year to the group’s annual convention and fair in that city. “It’s a great opportunity to see other people’s collections,” Kathleen says, “and there’s always a lot of trading going on.”
Then there’s the Fragrance Foundation, the perfume industry’s public relations arm, which bestows one of its annual Fifi Awards for best packaging. This year’s Fifi for best packaging in the Popular Appeal category, for example, went to Avon for Derek Jeter’s Driven men’s cologne, offered in a severely angular, rhomboid-shaped bottle with a square, brushed-metal cap. The woman’s Prestige Fragrance award was given to Kenzo’s Amour, packaged in an elongated, Modigliani-like ceramic container.
“There are a few people who actually make a living buying and selling bottles,” Kathleen says. “Some of the really rare bottles are worth thousands of dollars.” Most examples, though, seem to fall in more modest ranges. The highest price during a recent eBay survey was a $119 bid for a Czech crystal bottle.
But value is a matter of opinion. It’s the memories that remain long after the perfume. For many women, Kathleen among them, the sight of an iconic Jean Patou bottle can be as strong a memory spark as the scent it once contained. One of the largest pieces in her collection reminds her of her grandmother, whose preferred summer scent, lavender, the bottle once carried. “Whenever I see it,” Kathleen says, “I think of her.”
