A Perfume Factory at Grasse
Scroll down to see all the photos.
We visited the Fragonard perfume factory in Grasse, which is just north of the
Cote d'Azure. We toured a museum there that showed how
perfume had been manufactured from historic times. Shown here is some of the
equipment in the museum. Below left was how how the essence of flowers used to
be extracted before modern times. Flowers were pressed into animal fat and the
fat over a time absorbed the flower essence. Then the essence was extracted by
putting the fat into filters and pouring alcohol through filters. Next (if I
remembering all of this correctly) the collected alcohol was distilled and
reduced until it was concentrated into a liquid that could be used as a base
for perfumes.
