Perfume has been used in religious ceremony and also in medicine, for it was believed to have the power to ward off illness.

Elaborately chased silver pomanders were carried during times of plague. In the twentieth century, after Lalique's successful collaboration with Coty, commercial bottles were made in a wide variety of forms, ranging from the highly luxurious to the amusing Bakelite containers of the 1920s and 1930s.

This book traces the history of the scent bottle from the alabaster containers of ancient Egypt to mass-produced commercial bottles.