Description
Ambre Liquide by Astier de Villatte
10ml Eau de Parfum
Olfactive Family – Floral Amber
Perfume Author – Dominique Ropion
Drawn straight from the fantastical Middle Ages and the legendary pomander – that perfume-jewel used to ensure good health for body and soul – Ambre Liquide, like a precious talisman, exhales a marvellous amber, vanilla and slightly sweet scent with mystical, comforting powers.
Reinterpreted today by Dominique Ropion from an incredible recipe dating from 1348, rich in fragrant ingredients to ward off the Black Death and the forces of evil, its intensely fragrant formula immediately transports us to another world. Delectable scents of spices and aromatics are released, including warm, amber, resinous absolute of Cistus, a wild shrub from the arid Spanish scrublands; Damask Rose, the sweetest, most opulent and honeyed of all roses; heady, intoxicating wild Myrrh. Styrax resin with its warm musky trail of leather tones; and highly spiritual Frankincense.
Scent Profile – Cistus Labdanum, Damask Rose, Myrrh, Styrax, Leather, Frankincense, Vanilla
The 1348 formula, rediscovered by Annick Le Guérer –
Styrax calamite, gum arabic, myrrh, frankincense, aloe, red roses, sandalwood, musk, nutmeg, cloves, mace (nutmeg husk), ben nut (from Africa), karabe (yellow amber), basil, marjoram, savoury, mint, clove root, amber, nard oil (from India), muscatellin (musk-infused) oil.
The perfume historian Annick Le Guérer was immediately captivated by the therapeutic pomander with its magical claims to ward off illness and ailments of body and soul, which first appeared in the 12th century, presented in 1174 by the King of Jerusalem to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. A solid perfume, it was a ball of musk set with gold and diamonds, reserved for nobles and the wealthy, to be always carried and sniffed at the slightest hint of unpleasant odour in order to boost the immune system and fight melancholy. But the actual recipe for the divine scent that so enchanted the historian was concocted in 1348 by the College of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris to combat the great plague that was invading Europe. Composed of the richest and rarest ingredients, imported from all over the world via the Spice Route, it exhaled an intensely fragrant perfume, set in its sphere of gold and silver. “For the people,” Annick Le Guérer explains, “there were less expensive variants, using plants like savoury and basil, as well as a few spices and, above all, camphor and absinthe vinegars, which were used to coat the body.”
Because of its incredible fragrance, she decided to pass on the formula to the perfumer Dominique Ropion, her lifelong accomplice: “It was up to him to reconstitute Ambre Liquide, magnifying all those divine scents of materials outlawed in today’s perfumery.”
