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Written by Ruth Ruane
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These are very old perfume bottles from the late 1800's early 1900's. Other than being well balanced with a nice use of colour the labels on these bottles seem rather unremarkable. However each of these labels was hand painted with a pen and brush. I was looking at high resolution images and when I zoomed in and looked really close I could see little flaws in the lettering and paintwork that could only have arisen from the fact that they were hand painted. I was in awe of the skill and craftsmanship of the graphic design work.
Imagine the time it must have taken to work around the hand embossed pattern with a tiny paintbrush or print the tiny lettering perfectly with a fine pen. Each individual label could have taken up to four or even 6 hours to paint. The miniature bottle on the right has the coat-of-arms embossed and then silver leafed by hand. The blue ink script writing is meticulously hand finished. There is a stamped label around the neck of the bottle. It is an Eau de cologne bottle therefore the coat-of-arms is probably of the city of Cologne. The border at the bottom of the label is also hand embossed and finished. The label on the bottle on the bottom right has minute lilac flower painted in pink, white and lilac. The flowers are all embossed and the detail is hand filled in with a brush and pen.
The card on the left when viewed in high resolution shows what one might think is an early screen printing job but in actual fact is a wonderful example of pointilisim. Perfumes in those days were only for the very rich and now I understand why. They were artisan in the truest sense of the word. These perfumes were also made in the days before synthetics were first used in perfumes, so chances are they were all natural and hand blended
 Below are links to view the bottles and labels at high res. http://naturesnexus.org/images/Floral.ParfumExquis.Bottle.Front.jpg http://naturesnexus.org/images/Fragrant.Opoponax.Front.jpg http://naturesnexus.org/images/Carnation.jpg http://naturesnexus.org/images/SocietyEauDeCologneSmall.jpg Here is a detail : http://naturesnexus.org/images/detail.jpg
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Perfume Labels and Craftsmanship
Sunday, 02 March 2008 These are very old perfume bottles from the late 1800's early 1900's. Other than being well balanced with a nice use of colour the labels on these
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