Perfume Bottles

Perfume bottles are essential for safe storage because perfume is volatile and needs containers with very tight fitting lids or stoppers to prevent evaporation. The best ones are also made from coloured or faceted glass or other opaque material to prevent damage to perfume from sunlight. more...

Perfume was important to early civilisations and some of the earliest perfume bottles have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs dating back to around 1500 BC.

In Venice, glassmakers were producing small highly decorated glass bottles during the Renaissance, although few survive. By the 16th and 17th centuries manufacture had extended to England, France, Bohemia and Silesia. Production continued in Italy - for example, the famous Murano glassmakers produced bottles in coloured glass decorated with millefiori and latticino (strands of contrasting coloured glass used as a trellis work effect) while in Germany they were using white glass, decorated with gilding and enamels.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, perfume containers of great value and beauty were being made in England, using a wide variety of materials including enamel, porcelain and silver. They were often given as love tokens, usually by a man to his betrothed or wife.

Enamel perfume bottles were popular during the 18th and 19th centuries. They were made by the Battersea, Bilston and Wednesbury factories, amongst others. The enamel bottles contained glass phials, with stoppers, to hold the perfume and were decorated with delicately painted flowers, landscapes and classical scenes. Bilston was the biggest and most famous of the factories and Dovey Hawksford probably its best known artist.

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