Septimus Piesse

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George William Septimus Piesse (born May 30, 1820 , probably in Portland , † October 23, 1882 in Chiswick ) was a well-known English chemist and perfumer . He was one of the first to experiment with mixing natural and synthetic fragrances.

His family originally came from Italy, emigrated to France in the 17th century and then moved on to England from 1685 onwards due to religious persecution (see Edict of Fontainebleau ). His parents Charles Alexander James Piesse and Harriet Ann Nicholson lived in Portland and belonged to the middle class. As his first name Septimus , the seventh, suggests, he was the seventh of a total of eight children.

Piesse defined a nomenclature for perfumes whose terms top note, heart note and base note are still used today. He also invented the odaphon , a scale for classifying scents, similar to a musical scale, and for the harmonious mixture of scents - which, however, did not catch on.

He was the first to describe, u. a. based on guaiaculene , the blue color of the azulene and gave them their name.

From 1855 he was a partner in the Piesse & Lubin company in London. Two intact flacons of the company's best-known perfume Bouquet Opoponax were found in 2011 in the wreck of the Mary Celestia , which sank off Bermuda in 1864.

Works

Chemistry:

  • The Art of Perfumery . London 1857.
  • Chymical, Natural and Physical Magic. Intended For The Instruction And Entertainment Of Juveniles . 1858.
  • The Art of Perfumery, and Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants . London 1862 ( online [accessed March 2, 2015]).
  • On the Coloring Principle of Volatile Oils . In: Chemical News . No. 8 , 1863, p. 245 ( online [accessed March 2, 2015]).

Mummery :

  • The Mummers . In: Notes & Queries . tape 2 , no. X , December 15, 1860, p. 466-467 ( online [accessed March 2, 2015]).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The origin of his brother Louis James Pisse is described in Ivan Rudolph: Sturt's Desert Drama . Central Queensland University Press, 2006, p. 6.
  2. ↑ Origin and family tree can be found in the biography of his eldest brother Charles at http://www.valuingheritage.com.au/adoptagrave/Piesse_Alexander.html .
  3. ↑ A short note is often found in the Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des Sciences. No. 57, 1863, p. 1016 ( online ), cited as the source for the origin of the name, but this note did not appear until December 21, 1863. A somewhat more detailed account appeared under the title On the Coloring Principle of Volatile Oils on July 4, 1863 in the Chemical News , see list of works.
  4. ↑ http://www.perfumeintelligence.co.uk/library/perfume/p/houses/Piesse.htm
  5. ↑ http://www.cafleurebon.com/150-year-old-lost-fragrance-found-in-a-shipwreck-piesse-lubin-perfume-rescued-off-the-coast-of-bermuda/
  6. ↑ Maria Wiesner: The scent of civil war . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 17, 2014 ( online [accessed March 2, 2015]).
personal data
SURNAME Piesse, Septimus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piesse, George William Septimus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Perfumer
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1882
Place of death Chiswick