They say the history of perfumes started in Venice when in 1075 Teodora Ducas, daughter of Constantine X, married Domenico Selvo, 31st Doge of Venice. Teodora had a passion for perfumes and she somehow started a trend.
Around that time Venetian merchants started importing essences for perfumes from Greece, Persia, Egypt, the Arab courts and Constantinople.
The city soon became the most important importer of essences and spices employed to create new fragrances.
The tradition continued and strengthened as the centuries passed and, during the Renaissance, Venice became the most important producer of perfumes, soaps and beauty products.
No wonder then that sections of Palazzo Mocenigo, the Venice-based Museum and Study Center of the History of Fabrics and Costumes (one of Irenebrination's favourite institutions) were turned into the first Perfume Museum in Italy.
There are currently five rooms of the museum dedicated to the art of fragrances and, as seen in a previous post, the exhibits are testimony to the fine art of perfumery throughout the centuries.
Visitors can check out videos recounting the history of fragrances, learn more about the role of Venice in the history of perfume, see the laboratory of a perfumier from the 1500s with rare volumes about flowers and plants such as Pietro Andrea Mattioli's herbarium and look at the collections of vials and flacons and at the tools to extract essential oils from flowers.
The palace also hosts a collection by the Storp family: after founding the Drom Fragrances company in Munich, Ferdinand and Andreas Storp's grandparents Bruno and Dora started building a significant collection.
Dora began collecting flacons and bottles in 1921 and the tradition continued with Ursula, Ferdinand and Andreas Storp's mother.
The collection currently holds 3,000 objects and spans 6,000 years and can be admired in Munich at the Drop Fragrances's headquarter.
Rare samples of fragrance bottles are now part of a compact exhibition at Palazzo Mocenigo, entitled "Cabinet of Curiosities".
The display only occupies a relatively small part of the first floor and is divided into three categories (split into more disciplines than you could imagine...), but it includes some very bizarre, mysterious and extravagant perfume flacons, inspired by disciplines as different as history, nature, science and the arts.
The Mirabilia section is dedicated to inexplicable phenomena and includes therefore objects inspired by marvels, divinity, higher powers and the complexity of the microcosm.
Here you will find a made in Germany 18th century porcelain flacon in the shape of a women's leg completed with heeled shoes and white stocking with garters (juxtaposed to a plastic doll's leg for effect...).
German and English porcelain flacons with flowers, leaves, a cupid boy or chivalric and idyllic scenes scenes integrating hunters, a female figure, a dog and a nest look rather innocent when compared to more lascivious bottles from France representing a "pisseuse" (lady in a provocative position) or drop-shaped (or breast-shaped maybe...) glass flacons.
Sensuality is also hinted at via twin bottle flacons from 1860: these bottles held two containers and were used by women in the bourgeoisie who wore their corsets extremely tight at the waist.
Prone to fainting, they had these bottles at hand - one side contained smelling salts and the other perfume. So that the bottles were supposed to contain the antidote to their agony, but also the power of their seduction.
This fashion came back in the 1900 as proved by pendant flacons with two smelling glass salt containers covered in gemstones.
This section also includes a selection of diverse objects cleverly transformed into glass vials, from a Russian doll to the Shuco Teddy Bear flacon (yes, Jeremy Scott at Moschino wasn't the first one to do a teddy bear shaped fragrance bottle...), from a flacon incorporating inside it the figurine of a ballet dancer to a ceramic one representing the shape of an infant.
Schiaparelli's pipe-shaped "Snuff" is obviously part of this section together with further extravagant flacons such as a 1952 charming fragile bottle in the shape of a street light divided in three lamps for three different fragrances, and more novelty flacons shaped like a golf bag, a gasoline can and a Ford car.
Quite often the name of the perfume inspired the bottle: flacons for "Le Secret de la Perle" by Piéville, "Perlinette" by Volnay or "Chypre" by Ota were all shaped like pearls or they were characterised by the smoothness and the iridescent colours of pearls.
In some cases the perfume bottles recreated functional objects such as thimbles and amphoras or doubled up as pins, richly decorated rings, rhinestone covered brooches, enamelled hand mirrors-cum-powder boxes and pocket watches.
History combined with vanity in the flacons in the shape of Napoleon's bust, or engraved with the portrait of a general or with a cameo-like rendition of Queen Victoria (in memory of her golden crown anniversary in 1887).
Mysticism is strongly evoked by a series of objects including a velvet-covered scent pillow, pomanders shaped like a memento mori skull or a double head (a young girl and a skull, symbolising life and death).
But there are more objects evoking mystic powers including a French bronze chatelaine decorated with brown agate plaques and incorporating two fragrance vessels as pendants that give it a shape vaguely reminiscent of a cross; a mountain crystal heart-shaped smelling capsule and several multicoloured glass flacons with hinged caps with a chain and ring.
The second section of the exhibition - Artificialia - is a celebration of the creative and artistic mind, and looks at a wide range of themes, from scientific discoveries to exotic ethnography and geography.
Explorations and the human genius evoke discoveries, archaeological finds and artefacts from faraway continents. Flacons shaped like exotic figurines became for example popular from the 1800s on as proved by the bottles shaped like Japanese or Chinese women, a sultan and a Buddha with a ground-in tampion engraved with the Jean Patou logo.
In a way, though, the clay ointment vessels from Egypt dating 1st century BC in the shape of the head of the God "Bes" could be considered as their ancestors.
Exoticism is the main theme behind the 1934 fragrance designed by Lalique for "A Suma" by Coty (characterised by a glass bottle with two different packages, a box with Chinese themes or a box in red Moroccan leather), and behind the silver flacons from Austria-Hungary and Russia covered in precious and semi-precious stones and gems.
These items seem to be radically different from more humble flacons made with goat bladder (India, 1900) or nut wood.
Medicine is evoked via multiple glass vials used to store medications, rare perfumes, liquids, powders or capsules, but also through intriguing bottles like the opal glass flacon in the shape of a curly-haired head and the almorratxa, a rose water distributor from Spain (dating around the 17th/18th century).
This vessel doesn't have anything to do with medicinal purposes, but wouldn't look out of place in a doctor's (or maybe an alchemist's...) studio since it is characterised by an intriguing shape, it consists indeed in a glass vessel tapered towards the bottom with four pouring pipes.
Journeys are instead evoked by figurines of exotic animals like elephants or camels carrying perfume bottles, by globes, and flacons that reproduce the shape of useful objects, such as a pocket watch, boots, a safety buoy, or a double red glass bottle shaped like a whistle.
The most intriguing bottles from this section are the ones that hide interesting functions like the so-called "perspective flacons" (some of them creepily shaped like eyes...). These bottles integrated indeed extensible binoculars to be used at the theatre or during a trip.
The journey theme is also evoked via souvenir bottles such as a perfume by Jean Patou with a flacon shaped like the Normandie ship, a product launched for its transatlantic maiden voyage in 1935.
Vinaigrettes were also handy when travelling and they became an essential accessory in the 1800s for intimate and personal hygiene: travellers would take with them these silver boxes that contained a sponge soaked in perfumed vinegar.
The most sophisticated ones included in the exhibition were made in porcelain or crystal and decorated with enamel or precious stones.
Visitors who like dreaming about luxury trips can rediscover the history of French travelling boxes (originally dating back to the 14th century) or "Nécessaire de Voyage", wood boxes or leather bags that contained flacons, sewing kits, notebooks and even a psalm book in a very compact space.
A third section of the exhibition, entitled Naturalia, revolves around natural history and the examination of living specimen.
This section looks therefore at floral themes, plants, animals, birds, insects, fossils and shells, unveiling the magic properties of the natural world.
Many bottles, flacons, smelling vessels and vinaigrettes in this sections (in porcelain, silver or glass) call to mind these themes via decorative floral elements.
The most unusual bottles are the ones made with peach stones matched with ivory or walnut halves; the most elegant ones are definitely the Art Deco flacons, at times integrating dark decorative elements or materials, like black glass or black sculpted tapions like the perfume "Le Narcisse Noir" by Caron.
Fruit is also a big inspiration as proved by the pear-shaped pomanders or by the plum, pear and orange flacons in brightly coloured glass.
The Naturalia section also includes rather complex ointment and smelling vessels in the shape of a hatched chicken in a nest, of peacocks or owls and incense burners resembling birds.
Crickets, beetles, mice, cats and dogs, and more exotic animals like crocodiles also make an appearance in this part of the event.
The sea inspired rather poetical objects, for example mother-of-pearl flacons (often silver-framed and mounted on chains) and ring flacons made with mussel shells. But there are also several glass bottle reproducing shells and turtles, or fish-shaped smelling vessels with bodies made of flexible silver elements and sparkling garnet and ruby eyes.
Visitors will be surprised to see how such a compact space can hold all these pieces, and, while perfume bottles are not incredibly large items so even a small space can offer a great selection, the pieces chosen for the display at Palazzo Mocenigo were cleverly put together.
Ferdinand Storp agrees about this point and about the space where the event is taking place: "As a city of arts and craftsmanship, Venice provides the ideal stage for this extraordinary exhibition of flacon bottles, all notable pieces of art and craftsmanship.
"The fascinating thing about these perfume-bottle treasures is that they are still able to tell the same story that the fragrance inside them told them at their time.
"The fragrance may have evaporated hundreds of years ago on the velvety skin of a beautiful lady, but you can still see the flacon and imagine her story – which is yet another parallel to Venice, where every building, every corner, and every stone has its own story and history to tell."
Final tip: if you want to take some of the fragrances away with you there is currently a line of perfumes - The Merchant of Venice - featuring fragrances inspired by the local history. It was launched by Mavive, a company by the Vidal family, and the products are sold at the Palazzo Mocenigo shop, at the local airport and in selected shops.
Special thanks to Chiara Squarcina, Director of Palazzo Mocenigo, and to the Mocenigo staff, in particular Monica Giani at the ticket office for facilitating my visit to the museum.
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