How perfume technology shaped the town of Grasse

Few towns have been moulded by the evolution of the technology of their most significant industry as much as Grasse. From the introduction of enfleurage at the end of the eighteenth century to today’s synthetic chemicals and advanced extraction techniques, the town’s perfume industry has moved around, while retaining Grasse’s characteristic expertise.

It is not that the processes involved have superseded each other. On the contrary, even the ancient enfleurage technique is still used today for some high quality perfumes. But each new technology has to a greater or lesser extent shaped how and where Grasse has grown.

1790-1860 The development of enfleurage

Enfleurage is an ancient process of extraction based on how fats absorb essential oils. There are two methods. In hot enfleurage, animal fats are melted in large pots. When flowers are added, their essences are absorbed by the fat. In cold enfleurage, fats are spread on to frames and flowers inserted into them daily over a period of around three months, after which they become saturated with their scents. In both processes, the saturated fat is washed away with alcohol in a threshing machine, leaving behind an ‘absolute’.

Hot enfleurage can only be used with certain flowers, for example violets, roses de mai, orange flowers and acacia. Other more delicate flowers, notably jasmine and tuberose, can only be treated cold, which is particularly labour intensive. The two images below, although from much later, give some indication of how many workers (most of them women) are needed.

Top photo shows hot enfleurage at Bruno Court. Lower photo shows cold enfleurage at Lautier Fils

As cold enfleurage was introduced in Grasse from about 1780 onwards, the perfumeries needed large factory spaces instead of just traditional small workshops and, since public transport did not exist, an abundant supply of labour near at hand. Fortunately, not only could Grasse supply the labour (a population of around 12,000 made it a big town in 1800) but the buildings were available.

During the Revolution, the priests, nuns and monks of Grasse’s religious houses including the Augustinians, Ursulines, Dominicans and Franciscans were ejected from their convents. Many of the vacated large spaces, right next to where the workforce lived, were converted into perfumeries. One or two, such as Niel and what is now Fragonard, are still intact, while relics of others still stand.

Perfumeries first established between 1790-1860*.  Yellow hatched area is the approximate area enclosed by the walls of the old town.  Perfumeries marked in light brown were in religious buildings vacated at the Revolution. The Cordeliers convent was used mostly as a warehouse at this time, and became a perfumery around 1870.

So whereas the factory owners might otherwise have sought new buildings on the outskirts, Grasse retained its industrial base in and around the old town in the first half of the nineteenth century.

1860 The introduction of steam distillation

Like enfleurage, distillation of essences has been known and used since ancient times. It’s based on the principle that water vapour also captures essential oils. It requires a still or ‘alambic’: two vessels connected by a long curved tube with a fire under one of them.

What made the difference from around 1860 onwards was the replacement of the fire with steam delivered from a boiler, which was much more efficient, easier to control and, crucially, could deliver much higher volumes. It could only be used for certain plants: enfleurage was still used for jasmine and tuberose.

Bruno Court factory (stylised image) featuring black smoke from its chimney

The advent of steam distillation set off Grasse’s own industrial revolution. Productivity went up, but so did volume, so a big and local workforce was still essential. Images of Grasse at this time are dominated by smoking chimneys.

There were ingenious attempts to use premises within the town. Hugues Ainé managed to link two sites, one the old Dominican priory, by a tunnel under the streets and they installed a steam boiler in rue Mirabeau. But most of the factories had to be outside the old town.

Hugues Ainé's facade on rue Mirebeau shows an alambic in profile. The brick cylinder behind is what is left of a chimney

Furthermore, steam meant fuel and in the mid-nineteenth century that meant coal. So the coming of the first railway (the Paris-Lyon-Mediterrannée from Cannes) to carry freight as well as passengers, affected owners’ choices of new sites. Several opted to locate on or near what is now avenue Pierre Sémard, on the valley side above the new station.

Another source of new locations was the replacement or re-use of mills in the Riou Blanquet valley to the immediate east of the old town, which were going out of use as perfume crops replaced the olives and grain of former days. But, as the map shows, sites on agricultural land to the south and further east were also developed.

Perfumeries first established between 1860-1900.  Yellow hatched area is the old town. Black line shows the PLM (Cannes-Grasse) railway opened in 1871.

Many of these sites can still be identified, including Sozio, Warrick Brothers, Bernard-Escoffier (see my blog here) and especially Molinard and Roure-Bertrand.

Drawing of new Tombarel factory (also with smoking chimney!). Now part of Institut Fénelon school.

Several, especially Roure and Chiris, were very large and dominated their localities, as the illustration of the Tombarel factory also shows.

One anomaly was Bruno Court, developed as a factory only in 1870, but actually housed in the old Franciscan priory (the ‘Cordeliers’) on the northern edge of the old town. It had been used for various purposes, including as a warehouse, since the friars were expelled.

The effect of the introduction of steam distillation was to scatter the factories on the outskirts of the old town, often on agricultural land but still within easy reach of the working population in the centre. Not all of the old town factories went out of use, but their days were numbered.

1900 The arrival of chemical processes

At the end of the nineteenth century, advances in chemical engineering, much of it derived from the huge German chemicals and dyes industry, changed perfume technology again.

The first truly chemical technique was the use of volatile solvents to dissolve plant matter. Showing that there’s nothing new under the (Grasse) sun, essences were extracted using ether in the eighteenth century, but it was dangerous and expensive. From around 1900, more suitable modern solvents such as hexane and ethanol became available in volume. Hexane could be used to process jasmine and tuberose to replace enfleurage, and also for rose, orange flowers, violets and other raw materials important around Grasse.

The use of solvents required large, well-ventilated halls. One or two owners were able to extend their town sites: Bruno Court found space near the old Cordeliers to construct a new building and Jean Niel was able to extend the Ursulines site to the south.

Solvents hall, Roure-Bertrand

Other existing sites in the environs of the town had space to expand. Chiris was able to build the so-called ‘Mosqué’ on his existing premises (which were themselves previously the convent of the Capucins) It still exists today, despite the Palais de Justice having replaced everything else.

Antoine Chiris site with the 'Mosqué' seen behind it

Others in a similar position, all in the environs of the old town, were Méro et Boyveau, Lautier Fils, Roure-Bertrand, Pilar, Sozio and Tombarel.

Decisions to stay rather than exit to new locations were no doubt helped by the arrival of another railway to carry freight in and out of the town, the Chemin du Sud from Nice all the way to Draguignan, in 1890.

Perfumeries first established between 1900-1940.  Yellow hatched area is the old town. Black line shows the PLM railway and brown line the Chemin du Sud railway opened in 1890. Factories marked in maroon are new; those in brown are where solvent halls were added to existing sites.

But as the map shows, after the turn of the twentieth century, new perfumery sites, several of them relocations, had moved further from the old town. Lautier’s new site was near today’s remaining station, CAL moved from Ste Lorette to St Claude, as did Cavallier Freres, and Robertet expanded its Sidi-Brahim site significantly. Charabot, which incorporated the old Hugues Ainé business, created a new site to the west, moving from its old site fronting on to rue Mirebeau. Payan-Bertrand is still today on its site in St Mathieu, which dates from 1907.

1940s and beyond

The post-World War II period saw continuing change in Grasse’s perfume industry, driven by more technological innovation, especially with synthetic chemicals, and the intervention of companies from outside the region. From 1950 onwards, the Plan de Grasse became the location of choice. It was flat, so much easier to build on, and the rapid extension of housing in the fifties and sixties, together with modern public transport, provided a workforce which lived in better conditions than the cramped streets of the old town.

Grasse’s key industry had a rough time in the 1950s and 60s, when outside capital revolutionized the sector but devastated local proprietorship in the process. Yet some family owned and well-managed concerns (Mane and Robertet are the largest, but others include Payan-Bernard and Jean Niel) were able to overcome those trends and ensure the sector still thrives in and around Grasse today. I’ll write more about that some time soon.

The scene today

This last map shows what’s left of the perfumeries of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries in and around the old town today.

The scene today. Sites originating before 1940 and still associated with perfume in red. Buildings shown in grey still exist but have no modern connection with the business.

Most of the buildings in and near the old town have, where they have survived, been completely re-purposed or are just out of use. It is difficult to see how some (the massive old Jean Niel building on rue du Barri, for example) can be re-used.

Only three sites of any size near the old town are still associated with perfume. Fragonard and Molinard are now tourist destinations, but the Charabot site (now part of Robertet) is still used for research, development and administration. Further away, however, the early twentieth century factories of Payan-Bertrand, Schmoller & Bompard (now Xcentipharm) and Robertet still make perfume products.

*All maps in this article are created using Google MyMaps.