SCENT SECRETS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 74, 29 March 1933, Page 11

SCENT SECRETS

FLOWERS AND FISH

The astonishing secrets and romance of perfumery were revealed by M. Marcel Guerlain, head of a famous perfumery company, on his arrival in New York on a visit recently, -writes the London "Daily Express." "How do wo do it, we perfumers'?" M. Guerlain, a short, stout Frenchman, with, an eager nose, echoed smiling. "Why, first there is the base, some scent of another time, like bergamot from the eighteenth century. "It must be brought up to date by adding other essences, flowers, and synthetic." Ho made a motion of mixing. ''It is in this case ambre-ambergris. "That is an internal secretion of special fish, tho sturgeon; the cachalot' whale, which they produce in the north seas. "The northern fisherman, he picks up the lumps; it is greasy and firm with a marine odour; and it is sent down to the London market. 'Roman women used to rub balls of it on their arms, to make au amber skin. "In Egypt they eat it. They think it restores the vitality. "Wo put it in alcohol, twenty-five parts to a thousand, and let it mature two or three years; the longer the better, but too long is too expensive; and that is the base. ."Castoreum from the castor, the beaver in the Hudson Bay, from a little gland, and musk from Tonking, from the gland of a musk rat; those also we use," he went on. "The Chinese, what they will not do to musk"—he threw up his hands. "They put lead in the sacks, they wet it because it is sold by' weight. "Only tho English dare buy the raw musk in the gland. Musk is delicious. It smells of Russia leather. "Then there are the flowers for us —hyacinths from Holland, roses from France and Bulgaria—but I do not like the attar de Bulgarie. It is too sugary.. Jasmine from 'Provence, one thousand kilos of jasmine flowers to make one kilo of essence. "Those jasmine hills; you have not seen them?" He waved an arm. "They are like the Arabian Nights for odour. Jasmine is to perfume what butter is to cooking. "There is no good perfume without jasmine; there is no good cooking without butter. It makes a chord of scent. "It rounds out the whole, fills the gaps." Two hands described a rapid circle. "Tuberoses are the most expensive. Five thousand of your pounds of flowers make two and a half of essence, and it is twelve thousand francs the kilo; for the rectified and concentrated, one hundred and ten thousand. "Last of all, we add a chemical essence, synthetic, to give modernity, verye t excitement."