Rimmel‘s Vaporizer to be had in various styles and finishes, including silver plated and bronze, available at the time of the International Exhibition, London, 1862

Echoes of our Victorian ancestors’ love of perfumes, scents, colognes, nosegays and sweet vapours survive in many forms. Collectors have long sought scent flasks, vinaigrettes and perfume bottles of the period in silver, gold, glass, ceramics, enamel and other materials in patterns as diverse as the imagination can conjure. Rarer are Rimmel’s perfume fountains and vaporizers of the 1860s; or Piesse & Lubin‘s little joke, the Fountain Finger-Ring, designed to squirt mists of rose or frangipani into the unsuspecting face of any gentleman bold enough to squeeze a damsel’s hand!

But what of the contents of these charming bibelots? Fragrances were available in a dozen different forms to suit every mood. Piesse & Lubin operating from their headquarters, the Laboratory of Flowers, New Bond Street, catered to an entire spectrum of emotions, from sophisticated, with the Bosphorous Bouquet from the Valley of Sweet Waters, to silly, with Box-his-Ears (sequel to Stolen Kisses). Their Little Dorrit’s Nosegay was a novelty for the Christmas season of 1855, and a few years later the firm opened a Perfumery Boudoir at the Opera House, Covent Garden, for the sale of fans, bouquets, nosegays and neatly boxed perfumes and colognes. Not to be eclipsed, Rimmel won contracts in the 1860s and ’70s to provide scented programmes to several London theatres.

Popular as orange, violet and lily-of-the-valley were, ladies craved the exotic: at the turn of the century Grossmith’s scored an immediate hit with Shem-el-Nessim, ‘Exquisitely suggestive of Oriental luxury.’

an advertisement for J. Grossmith & Son’s Shem-el-Nessim, ‘The Scent of Araby,’ London, 1910

• The following items currently listed at myfamilysilver.com are of special interest: A gold-mounted porcelain scent flask; a silver horn vinaigrette, Sampson Mordan, London, 1872; a George III silver vinaigrette commemorating Admiral Nelson, Matthew Linwood, Birmingham; a Victorian silver-mounted tiger’s claw vinaigrette, circa 1880; a French silver-mounted scent jar, Tiffany, circa 1910; and an enamelled silver perfumiere