00:00When visiting Grasse you need to deal with the subject of perfume.
00:16As always everything here is connected with everything.
00:20The development of the city cannot be separated from the development of perfumes.
00:27In the International Perfume Museum in Grasse three rooms are dedicated to the history
00:33of perfume during the antiquity.
00:35It starts in Egypt with perfume used for religious ceremonies and for mummification.
00:50With blown glass it will be an important invention for the production of perfume, especially
00:58that some raw materials are very, very expensive.
01:02And so people in Rome can have a very small bottle in order to buy a very small quantity
01:07of perfume.
01:09People are going to use this perfume after the bath, in the public bath in Rome, and
01:15they are going to have a massage with this perfume.
01:37This is Place Auxerre.
01:38This is the famous square where the Tannous settled in the Middle Ages.
01:42Grasse is well known for perfume nowadays, but since the Middle Ages these people working
01:49were producing leather.
01:51So they need to have animal skins and a lot of water.
01:55That's why here on Place Auxerre there was a channel in the middle of the square for
02:01the Tannous to wash their skins and then to have leather production.
02:07Some of them started to make leather gloves, but you can imagine that leather gloves did
02:11not smell good.
02:12So in the middle of the 17th century, the first perfumer glove makers are going to work
02:19in Grasse and then produce perfume pomades to perfume leather in Grasse.
02:24This will give birth to the activity of perfume in the town of Grasse and then of the industry
02:31of Grasse at the end of the 19th century.
02:42At the end of the 19th century, Art Nouveau is very important all over France, especially
03:01for the design of the bottle.
03:03Famous designers like Lalique are going to produce bottles inspired by nature.
03:12And it is also the case for the perfumers.
03:15They are inspired by nature.
03:17And what is important for this new idea of perfume are synthetic products.
03:23Since 1860, perfumers can recreate the smell of a jasmine field or the smell of the seaside.
03:31So this is a great innovation in the construction and in the composition of perfume.
03:40The synthetic raw materials are going to give a new way to modern perfumes.
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