Material Cultures of Scent

If tobacco was, normatively speaking, the preserve of masculinity then the smelling bottle was the visual symbol of olfactory femininity. Around 1700 the smelling bottle replaced an earlier object, the pomander, as the most popular form of material culture associated with smell. This shift illustrates several wider changes. The shift from the pomander to smelling bottle was a physiological shift from womb to nose; an embodied shift from leaky to stoppered-up visions of corporeality; and a practical shift from creating atmosphere to mitigating against atmospheres created by others. The design, use, and cultural representation of the smelling bottle all testified to these important shifts.