Five hidden perfumeries
- Apr 28, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 23
Like every historic town, Grasse has many re-purposed buildings and it's hardly surprising that many of them here have a common thread of perfumery. Most of the religious complexes at the edges of the old town which were cleared of their inhabitants during the Revolution found new uses in the trade, while even as grand a mansion as the Hotel Clapiers-Cabris in rue Mirabeau (now the rather under-rated Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Provence) spent much of the nineteenth century as a perfume factory.
In the centre of the town, what were once small perfumery workshops dating from well before 1850, where the owners often lived above them, became purely residential buildings as larger premises became needed. 6, place de la Poissonerie is a good example.
Some of the newer perfume factories purpose-built outside the old town during Grasse’s golden industrial age between 1850 and the Great War are also still there. They were turned or incorporated into residential developments, sometimes with hints of their past in plain sight. Here are five of them.
Résidence des Cardamines, Avenue Sainte Lorette
The clue is the chimney. Why else should this rather pleasant yellow-painted modern development include such a thing? To say nothing of the little panoramic turret? From the rear it's a little more obvious what it was:
In 1891, one Honoré Joseph Sozio, whose family business had been a perfumery for over a century, built a new factory on avenue Ste-Lorette, which was once the main road south out of Grasse. At the time, it was just agricultural land on the edge of the town. The development included a large distillery with a steam boiler. The site, which was around one hectare in size, was extended over the next 20 years in order to compete with the leaders of the time, Roure and Chiris, reaching its greatest extent in 1910 but continuing as a factory until as late as 1996, having been sold by the family in 1982.
What remains and was re-developed as apartments was the first factory building, for which the turret was a staircase. Remarkably, Sozio as a business still exists and thrives, although the Sozio family sold it in 1979.
Résidence Roses de Mai, Avenue Font Laugière
There’s really no external clue to this building’s origins, except maybe its location, at the top of Grasse’s quartier des Moulins on an extraordinarily difficult-to-navigate street leading down to the narrow valley of the Rossignol. Two brothers named Bertrand established a new factory here in 1865, almost certainly on the site of an older mill, and it became connected with an adjacent soap mill. Like many perfumeries, it grew strongly with the coming of steam distillation and in the 1920s Grasse’s ‘go-to’ architect of the time, Léon le Bel was responsible for a significant expansion of the site.
Bertrand Frères was eventually taken over in 1967 and the factory was closed in the 1980s. The site was consolidated with that originally of another perfume business next door, Lautier Fils, and developed as apartments. What you see today was once the entrance to the factory: hence the arch.
No 1 Travers Font Laugière
Actually only a few metres above the Roses de Mai, this is difficult to see as a whole.
From its front entrance, viewed from the boulevard Gambetta above it, is just another older apartment building which looks as if it has been somehow inserted into a tiny street. The external, if rather misleading, clue to its origin is the ‘AF’ in stone over the door. But a frontal view from the Gustave Eiffel bridge near the bottom of the valley shows the true size of the building.
The factory dates from the 1820s, expanded from an older building and garden, and including a veranda still visible today. The initials were originally 'B-E' for a company named Bernard-Escoffier Fils, which originated with a member of the Fragonard family but was sold on in 1854.
After the growth typical of Grasse's businesses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, perfume activity ceased in 1930. The factory was used to make anisette and the initials were changed to 'AF' for Augier Frères. After the war the site was unused for many years, until what was left of the factory complex was refurbished to the social housing which is its role today.
10 av Etienne Carémil
The three of Grasse’s perfumeries which welcome visitors (Fragonard, Molinard and Gallimard) are well known, but until the end of the sixties there was a fourth, Honoré Payan. The perfumery has the distinction of being hidden twice, because it had its origins at 6 place de la Poissonnerie, when, in 1854, Honoré Payan took over a workshop which had been in use under two other proprietors since at least the end of the eighteenth century.
In 1886 Payan merged with another company to form Payan & Bertrand, which still thrives today at av Jean XXIII and in the Plan de Grasse. But in 1907, the brand Honoré Payan was bought out (perhaps today we would say de-merged?) by Etienne Carémil, who, like Eugène Fuchs with Fragonard in 1925, wanted to create a consumer perfume business. The building he used was not built for the purpose, but its road-side site was well placed to be highly visible to visitors. As the postcard from 1964 shows, he and his successors made it very obvious to passers-by and hotel guests that it was open to customers to see the factory and buy its products.
The road concerned is now named after him because his business was successful and he went on to become maire of the town from 1931-41.
Following another change of ownership and a merger, the business, now Jehanne Rigaud Parfums but still strongly branded as Honoré Payan, is located in Bar sur Loup on the road up to Gourdon. 10 av Etienne Carémil is a residential building, distinguished on the road side by its clever trompe l’oeil which makes it look as if it has more windows than is really the case.
18 avenue Mathias Duval/27 avenue Sainte Lorette
This office block on av Mathias Duval, which has fairly recently been repainted and looks relatively distinguished compared to the buildings around it, hides an old perfumery site which extends upwards to av Ste-Lorette high above it. There, it’s right next door to the old Sozio site (Résidence des Cardamines) and a chimney 80 metres away from that of Sozio betrays its origins.
Like the Sozio site, the complex was built on agricultural land, in 1908. It was for the Bérenger Jeune perfumery, which had originally been on rue Droite in the middle of the old town. In 1920, it was bought by MM. Camilli, Albert and Laloue, together known as CAL.
CAL rapidly ran out of space in Sainte Lorette, and in 1930 had a completely new factory designed by the ubiquitous Léon Le Bel and built on what is now av Georges Pompidou in St Claude. It became one of Grasse’s biggest companies and was snapped by the US chemical combine Pfizer in the sixties wave of acquisitions of perfumeries. The St Claude site no longer exists, but the Ste-Lorette buildings, which were re-purposed in the 1990s, are still largely intact.
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