The Musée International de la Parfumerie, a public institution with the label "Musée de France", is dedicated to one of the most prestigious traditional French activities and offers visitors the opportunity to discover the history and originality of the work of industrialists and the great perfumery houses. A true testimony of the international technical, aesthetic, social and cultural history of the tradition of the use of fragrances, the museum approaches the history of fragrances in all its aspects through an anthropological approach - raw materials, manufacturing, industry, innovation, trade, design, applications and through very different forms - art objects, decorative arts, textiles, archaeological witnesses, unique pieces or industrial forms.
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LifestyleTranskript
00:00When visiting Grasse you need to deal with the subject of perfume.
00:16As always everything here is connected with everything.
00:20The development of the city cannot be separated from the development of perfumes.
00:27In the International Perfume Museum in Grasse three rooms are dedicated to the history
00:33of perfume during the antiquity.
00:35It starts in Egypt with perfume used for religious ceremonies and for mummification.
00:50With blown glass it will be an important invention for the production of perfume, especially
00:58that some raw materials are very, very expensive.
01:02And so people in Rome can have a very small bottle in order to buy a very small quantity
01:07of perfume.
01:09People are going to use this perfume after the bath, in the public bath in Rome, and
01:15they are going to have a massage with this perfume.
01:37This is Place Auxerre.
01:38This is the famous square where the Tannous settled in the Middle Ages.
01:42Grasse is well known for perfume nowadays, but since the Middle Ages these people working
01:49were producing leather.
01:51So they need to have animal skins and a lot of water.
01:55That's why here on Place Auxerre there was a channel in the middle of the square for
02:01the Tannous to wash their skins and then to have leather production.
02:07Some of them started to make leather gloves, but you can imagine that leather gloves did
02:11not smell good.
02:12So in the middle of the 17th century, the first perfumer glove makers are going to work
02:19in Grasse and then produce perfume pomades to perfume leather in Grasse.
02:24This will give birth to the activity of perfume in the town of Grasse and then of the industry
02:31of Grasse at the end of the 19th century.
02:42At the end of the 19th century, Art Nouveau is very important all over France, especially
03:01for the design of the bottle.
03:03Famous designers like Lalique are going to produce bottles inspired by nature.
03:12And it is also the case for the perfumers.
03:15They are inspired by nature.
03:17And what is important for this new idea of perfume are synthetic products.
03:23Since 1860, perfumers can recreate the smell of a jasmine field or the smell of the seaside.
03:31So this is a great innovation in the construction and in the composition of perfume.
03:40The synthetic raw materials are going to give a new way to modern perfumes.