When the tiny stopper is delicately eased free, a mere wisp of scent imprisoned for over 650 years is released.
In a unique experiment, scientists at the L’Oreal perfume institute in Paris tried to analyse the ingredients of a perfume whose precious container survived the Black Death, which annihilated a third of the population of Europe.
— From Scent of tragedy lingers in a 650-year-old perfume bottle buried by victim of pogrom, an article (with video) at the Guardian about a new exhibit, Treasures of the Black Death, that opens later this week at The Wallace Collection in London. Many thanks to Jessica for the link!
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Oh I live for stuff like this! It combines my love of perfume, history and archaeology – something that doesn't happen often! Ugh, anything about the Plague makes my heart ache, but this dig is so fascinating! Thank you so much for the link!
LOL – can you tell how excited I am? Sorry about all the exclamation points.
I think it would be fascinating, too. I'd love to see this.
This is amazing. It had me wondering: what *is* the world's oldest extant perfume?
I wouldn't even dare to take a sniff, I'm sure I'd love it and of course, it's been discontinued!!!!!!
Ha!
The exhibit really does look fascinating, doesn't it? Nice that they did the video since that's probably all I'll ever see of it.
Me too.
Ojeda, both of the links in this article are now dead, but I think it provides enough info to start off on a google search:
http://www.nstperfume.com/blog/_archives/2005/2/27/378522.html
LOL!
Thanks for the link!
Oh, to be so rich that I could jet off to all corners of the globe seeing this sort of exhibition! I wish I could go but alas, it is too far for me.
Perhaps it is a traveling exhibit though…I didn't really check into it!