Edwin T. Morris

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Drench yourself in the classic scent of Rose given the royal nod by Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare; make your boudoir emanate with the warmth of the same Frankincense used by Cleopatra to seduce Mark Antony; spice up your senses with perfume culled from aromatics once found only in exotic reaches of the Far East and thought to be more precious than gold jewels. In this new book, expert Edwin Morris traces perfume's exotic history. The Scents of Time reveals perfume's surprisingly widespread and permanent place in world culture through beautiful full-color photographs of artifacts and paintings dating from 2000 B.C. to the present. Drawn from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the works include tiny Babylonian bronze vessels, kohl containers from Egypt, Grecian animal-shaped perfume flasks, blown-glass bottles from Rome and the Islamic world, Chinese scrolls, porcelain potpourris from the court of Louis XV, Lalique art glass from the turn of the twentieth century, and much more. Of course, no story of perfume would be complete without the scents themselves so Givaudan Roure, the prestigious perfume manufacturer of such names like Armani, Dior, and Balmain, has specially blended eight perfumes for this book. Together, they represent the most influential scents in history: Eau de Cologne, Orange Blossom, Spice, Frankincense, Rose, Sportif, Millefleurs, and Sandalwood-Jasmine.

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