Perfume Funnels

Long before perfumes came with spray tops, fragrance was sold by apothecaries, chemists, or perfumers and was stocked in bulk, not pre-bottled. Customers brought or purchased a personal scent bottle to be filled from these larger stock containers and transferring the precious liquid was a tedious task. Those early personal perfume bottles were often hand-blown crystal or cut glass with very small mouths; both for elegance and to limit the evaporation of expensive essential oils and alcohols.

In wealthy households, such prized scents were sometimes purchased by the pint and were carefully poured into the dainty personal bottles using tools just as lovely — scent funnels.
From the 1700s through the early 1900s, these miniature masterpieces were crafted from silver, porcelain, or glass, designed to guide every drop of costly perfume into its elegant home. And for many upper-class travelers, travel cases with small refillable flasks or cut-glass bottles were taken abroad with a scent funnel being an essential companion in those sets.

By the 1920s–1930s, with designers like Coty, Guerlain, and Chanel, perfume became a commercial luxury product sold in sealed branded bottles and the need for home decanting, and for funnels, faded. But for collectors today, these early funnels are a reminder, in miniature, of a bygone era when luxury and elegance was prized in even the most mundane of tasks.