The Art of Perfumery, and the Methods of Obtaining the Odours of Plants; with Instructions for the Manufacture of Perfumes for the Handkerchief, Scented Powders, Odorous Vinegars, Dentifrices, Pomatums, Cosmetics, Perfumed Soap, etc. To which is added an Appendix on Preparing Artificial Fruit-Essences, etc.

Bookseller Notes

The first edition of this classic work on perfumery, including many recipes and wide-ranging discussion of the history and art of odour creation and extraction. Piesse pioneered the classification of odours into 'notes' based on a musical metaphor: 'there is, as it were, an octave of odours like an octave in music; certain odours coincide, like the keys of an instrument [...] each producing different degrees of a nearly similar impression'; enumerating also 'semi-odours' (p. 63).Piesse was a London perfumer with a background in analytical chemistry (at University College London), who established the firm Lubin & Piesse with a Parisian colleague in the same year as this work was published. Both business and book were enormously popular, the latter running to numerous editions in a short space of time - but the first edition is uncommon in this sort of condition.