The origin of perfume
The right perfume can be a tool to express our personality, shape our self-image and connect with others. Scents accompany us in everyday life and reveal something about us, evoking memories and feelings. Choosing the right fragrance for our home is at least as important. The scent that is the hallmark of your home will tell you a lot about you. Choose the scented candle that best describes your personality. Let’s talk a little about the origins of perfume.
Ancient times..
The origin of the perfume is usually attributed to the ancient Egyptians, who used various scents to celebrate prayers and religious ceremonies, burning essential oils, resin and scented fragrances. If we think about it better, we could even use scented candles for a similar purpose.
Over time, scents have also played an important role in daily hygiene. Already in the time of ancient Egypt, there was a trade in intensely scented spices, aromas and resins, which were abundant in Egypt, but also came from distant lands such as the Middle East, Arabia, India. During these trips, fragrant trees, scented resins, myrrh, and incense were brought in, which were the main constituents of the scents of the time. We can see how important fragrances were already at this time. Scented candles had not yet appeared at that time, instead a wide variety of the above-mentioned scented plants was available.
However, the sacred function of the fragrance is not lost in time and goes on with the secular fragrance over the centuries. The perfume was also used in religious ceremonies to cleanse the body and as a real cosmetic. Grinds and scented oils were obtained by a slow maceration process and extraction of essences from aromatic plants, trees and resins. Even today, we use these so-called macerates to perfume our natural cosmetics. Scented candles contain mostly essential oils, but they can also be made with natural essential oils.
In the time of the ancient Greeks, perfume stepped out of the walls of the church into the lives of ordinary people. He continued to play an important role in temple events, such as weddings, births, funerals, but also appeared in the profane sphere. Becoming part of beauty rituals, it became an everyday accessory. During the trips to the East, special, exotic spices were added to the palette of fragrances, thus launching an intensive perfume trade worldwide. You can also find a wide range of fragrance oils that evoke an oriental atmosphere for scented candles.
The ancient Etruscans, who lived in the territory of present-day Italy, enjoyed the scent of perfume in the form of incense, for example, at dance events, or even at funerals, always choosing the right drink for the occasion. By choosing the right scented candle, we can also continue this ancient tradition, enhancing the mood we want to achieve with matching scents. One of the most important innovations attributed to the Romans is the use of glass containers for perfumes. This material is odorless and easy to mold, can be made in a variety of shapes and colors, so they were perfect for storing your first cosmetics and scented oils, and are still a primary choice for casting a scented candle to this day.
Especially among Arab peoples, it was common to use various fragrances to accompany cleansing rituals or as an air freshener. The discoveries of chemistry and alchemy have allowed Arabs to export valuable raw materials around the world and thus bring the perfume trade under their control.
Perfume in Western culture
Perfume art has made tremendous progress during the Renaissance, thanks to the knowledge gained in the field of chemistry and the development of distillation techniques. Essences and scented waters were mainly used to scent the body, the environment, and leather accessories such as gloves and belts. .
According to the news, in the late 1600s, the merchant Giovanni Paolo Feminis invented “Aqua Mirabilis,” a drink thought to be able to cure any disease. After moving to Cologne, he started to produce and market this famous perfume, which was based on more than 20 different fragrances and was marketed under the name “Cologne Water”. After a few years, it became widespread in France and began to be used as a perfume under the name “Eau de Cologne”.
Here we now stop to describe the fascinating history of perfume. As a note, through the scented candle, I would add that today, several perfume factories are engaged in the production of high-quality, designer scents. So the scented candle can rightly be called the perfume of your home.