I still remember the line from some move in which there was this woman who collected antique perfume bottles. Well, they were all procured at a great price and contained some of the finest perfumes that various centuries had ever owned.
But when she died and it came to the calculation and estimation of her estate, the price that the antique perfume bottles would fetch became a point of great discussion. Till the estimators from an auction house were brought in to determine the price. And they found that there was no perfume left in any of those antique perfume bottles. They had quite simply evaporated during her long yet uneventful life!
That incident of the antique perfume bottles never fails to make me laugh. But it also brings to mind another collection of antique perfume bottles. There was this maharajah in the southern part of India who was reputed to be so fond of antique perfume bottles that he spent not just his fortune but also that of his future generations on acquiring and using the finest of French antique perfume bottles. Needless to say, his family too would have faced the same plight as the lady’s family in the movie.
But seriously, antique perfume bottles are big business. Maybe it has something to do with the fascination that mankind has always had with perfumes and other such scents down the ages. After all, history is replete with examples of people going out of their way to collect various vials of perfumes. Of course, not all of them were antiques to begin with, but most of those surely are by now!
A recent newspaper article once again brought home the truth about antique perfume bottles. Apparently one was found in the collection of a duchess in England (and surprisingly, this one still had a whole lot of the original perfume in it, intact!) and was put up for sale. The finest auction houses auctioned it for a princely sum of a million pounds. I’m pretty sure the duchess never saw one red cent of that as she was well and truly gone, but I’m beginning to wonder if she knew it was worth that much. This was because she apparently spent the last few days of her life in near absolute penury. Imagine sitting on an antique perfume bottle worth that much and not knowing about it at all! Well, I’m saving the remnants of the perfume bottle I bought ten years ago. Who knows what it might be worth in the days to come!
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