Episode 26: Perfume

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017
‘Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music and poetry’ (Madame de Stael, Corinne, Book 10, Chapter 5, 1807). For this episode let us join the guardian of generations, Dr Sam Willis, and the jester of journals, Professor James Daybell, as they put their noses to good use to produce, for our auditory and olfactory delights, the unexpected history of perfume. Our expert perfumers will combine the scents and delight the senses as they evoke and convey you on a journey from sperm whale vomit and the history of whaling to Gervase Markham’s The English Huswife published in 1615, from advertising and female consumerism in the nineteenth century to the Reformation and medieval Catholic rituals, and from plague masks in the seventeenth century to poisoned gloves.
Sam and James will blend the links to discover that this unexpected history is actually all about: memories, power, culture, secrecy, competition, commodities, industry, medicine, status, myth, insecurities, fear, knowledge, change, and death…among other things. For those of you lucky enough to find some ambergris, current estimates value it at $29 per gram – happy beachcombing everyone!
I shall leave the last word to Pope Julius II, ‘The smell of gunpowder is sweeter to me than all the perfumes of Arabia’, not something you find on many department store shelves.
- Painting of ‘Lady holding a Pomander on a gold chain’ by Pieter Janz Pourbus, painted between 1560-1565. Held at The Weiss Gallery, London
- Copper engraving of a seventeenth century plague doctor (c. 1656)
- Ambergris
- Vintage 1930s Odo-ro-no advert
- Rosary with pomander. Taken from a diptyche with portraits of the Pilgrim Couple, painted by Barthel Bruyn the Elder, 1528. Held in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum.
- Nineteenth century image of a sperm whale hunt.
- Whale Hunting Museum, Pico Island, Azores, Portugal
- Japan Factory Ship, Nisshin Maru. Image shows whale mother and calf.
More Podcasts

Episode 34: The Itch
2, 5, 2017 - “Disputandi Pruritus Ecclesiarum Scabies” (‘The itch of disputing will prove the scab of the .... Read More

Contagion!
14, 4, 2020 - Histories of the Unexpected explores the past in ways that you never dreamt possible. Surely .... Read More
Subscribe to our newsletter
Keep up to date with Histories of the Unexpected