Forms for Fragrance –Treasures from the Takasago Collection

The history of fragrances can be traced back to about 3000 BC, in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Aromatic oils, frankincense, myrrh, and other fragrant materials were used not only in religious rituals but also, it is thought, as part of the lives of royalty and the aristocracy.

In the ancient Greco-Roman period, fragrant materials and fragrant oils became more widespread. Ceramic and glass fragrant oil jars and jars for balsam were made in Greece and Rome, respectively. Technical innovations in Roman glass increased the variety of designs for jars and other containers.

From the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period, due to the development of distillation techniques, many perfumes were produced and used, stored in glass containers.

In Western Europe, pastilles, kept in containers called pomanders (“fragrant ball” in French; derived from pomme, apple, and d’ambre, ambergris), were the main form in which fragrances were presented.

In the seventeenth century, it become possible to extract essential oils, using alcohol. And the culture of perfume swiftly blossomed. In the eighteenth century, while royalty and aristocrats played the leading role, the custom of enjoying perfumes spread among the common people as well. Elegant ceramic perfume bottles by Meissen, Wedgwood, and other ceramics companies earned popularity.

From the nineteenth century on, with the development of civil society, perfume culture became even more sophisticated. A dazzlingly beautiful world developed of perfume bottles created with increasingly sophisticated glassmaking skills, by Bohemian glass, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco artists.

In the twentieth century, perfume makers commissioned Lalique and other glass artists to create designs that suited the perfumes they were going to launch on the market. The perfume bottle entered the age of mass production.

The special exhibits in this section include paintings, furniture, and other furnishings from the collections of art museums in Japan. These works, which date from the latter half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, are displayed near the perfume bottles and toiletries sets with which the motifs depicted in the paintings and the design themes have a deep relationship.

The history of fragrance in Japan is thought to have begun after the transmission of Buddhism in the sixth century. Compared with the ancient Orient, in which the history of fragrance goes back over two millennia, two centuries before the common era, and with European countries who received its influence, interest in fragrance in Japan emerged somewhat later. But its culture of fragrance, once launched, blossomed in the blink of an eye and went on to develop in a manner quite unlike that in other countries.

In Japan, the fragrances produced by burning incense were initially used in religious rituals and at the imperial court. In time, they became part of daily life, mainly among the upper classes. In the Heian period (794 to 1185), competitions to produce better incense fragrances (takimonoawase) and other elegant games developed. In the Muromachi period (1338–1573), fragrance was elevated to an art as Kōdō, the Way of Fragrance or Way of Incense. Those developments were accompanied by a profusion of implements created to burn incense and “listen” to its fragrance. Many superb works were produced--particularly lacquerware, as part of the accoutrements of daimyo and other distinguished persons in the Edo period (1600-1868), when the Japanese culture of fragrance reached its peak.

The Meiji period (1868-1912) was an age in which new ideas took hold. Notably, the production of craft objects in Japan shifted from the system utilizing division of labor among craftsmen that had been in operation before the early modern period to the implementation of a new concept: individual artists working on their own to create works of art. In the field of incense utensils, the production of lavish, gemlike objects as in the early modern period fell off dramatically. Incense burners and incense cases, however, came to be regarded not only as practical utensils but as objects worthy of appreciation for their artistic quality. Indeed, they became a favorite target for the application of the creativity of the many individual artists who emerged from the Taisho period (1912-1926) on. Those artists created a multitude of magnificent works.