The case of the twentieth-century perfume industry illustrates the varieties of knowledge developed in the production of materials requiring a high level of both technical and aesthetic expertise. Previous studies, such as those of Geoffrey Jones and Eugenie Briot, have shown the significance of synthetic perfume materials for expanding the market for finished perfumes and fragranced products. However, these have not examined the kinds of contested knowledge and peculiar expertise developed to making novel products appealing to the senses. Integral in my analysis is Steven Shapin's work on the sciences of subjectivity. He advocated greater appreciation of the role of the senses in ways of knowing, underscoring the commercial heft of the 'aesthetic industrial complex', his designation of industrial, academic and government entities reliant on trained aesthetic judgment to understand markets and design products.
In my paper, I will examine the knowledge-making practices of firms producing or managing perfumer materials over the middle of the twentieth century, in Britain, Germany and the US. From the cases of W. J. Bush, Schimmel and Arthur D. Little, I argue that a particular form of blended expertise mixing embodied and instrumental knowledge was developed in industrial perfumery. Balancing on one hand the demands of aesthetic sensibility and a luxury product, and on the other, chemical knowledge, industrial production and corporate limitations, twentieth-century perfumery is a prime case for studying science and the boundaries of scientific practice in modern industry.
