This week’s historical keepsake from hell
Ambergris
A weekly dose of macabre history, gently pressed into your hands like a haunted educational pamphlet.
At some point in history, somebody found a suspicious lump washed up on a beach and thought, “You know what? Rich people should smell like this.”
And unfortunately, they were right.
Meet ambergris, a waxy substance that forms inside the intestines of sperm whales, often around the indigestible beaks of squid. (Did you know squids had beaks? Oh, that’s a side story for sure…)
Fresh, it smells rather dreadful. But after floating around the ocean for years, it develops a rich, musky, almost magical scent.
Nature’s most disgusting little success story.
Nobody knows who first decided this stuff belonged in perfume, but it was prized in the Arab world by the ninth century.
By the Victorian era, perfumes like Ess Bouquet and Eau de Chypre included ambergris to help their fragrances linger.
Oh, and despite its charming nickname, “whale vomit,” scientists believe it probably comes from the other end.
Wonderful.
‘Magical.’
Somewhere along the way, humanity looked at whale digestive waste and decided it was the height of sophistication.
This week’s haunting: Oddities
A scent inspired by the strange collections of the Victorians that seemed like a good idea at the time…
And honestly, to us collectors, it still holds up.
Amber, Musk, and Jasmine. (A personal favorite.)
Please note: none of this was written by robots aka AI. It came from the dark folds of Lacey’s very human mind.
www.seanceperfumes.com · @seanceperfumes
