Aluminum Perfume Bottles c1896

Aluminum perfume bottles and powder puff boxes shown in an antique Victorian 1896 Busiest House In America publication.


You may think that aluminum was an unusual metal to make perfume bottles from, but, at one time, the metal was highly prized. In the mid 1880s, aluminum metal was exceedingly difficult to produce, which made pure aluminum more valuable than gold. So celebrated was the metal that bars of aluminum were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Napoleon III of France is reputed to held a banquet where the most honored guests were given aluminum utensils, while the others made do with gold. But by 1895, a new process was developed to produce aluminum more inexpensively and soon it became a more common metal used for the making of a variety of household goods, including vanity items.

Aluminum was touted as untarnishable.

Quadruple Plate Perfume Bottles & Puff Boxes Victorian Catalog Advertisements

Here is a bevy of antique quadruple silver plate vanity accessories including perfume and cologne bottles, atomizers, puff boxes and more. Some of these were by the Wilcox Silverplate Co.; Middletown Silver Co.; Pairpoint; and the Meriden Silver Plate Co.

Advertisements are taken from Victorian era catalogs from:

• The Busiest House in America (Lapp and Flershem, Chicago). 

COLOGNE & BARBER BOTTLES:

 

PERFUME ATOMIZERS:

The atomizers below were made by a variety of silverplate manufacturers including Pairpoint Mfg Co. 

 

BOTTLES & OTHER ITEMS:  

 

Crown Perfumery Lavender Smelling Salts Bottle with Silverplate Holder, shown below

Crown Perfumery Lavender Smelling Salts Bottle with Silverplate Holder, shown below

Roger et Gallet Johann Marie farina Cologne with Silverplate Holder, shown below.

  

PUFF (POWDER) BOXES: