Civet “Supreme” Absolute P&N

Civet “Supreme” Absolute P&N, An Indepth Look:

Civet. A soft, fatty substance of animal origin. It is imported principally from Abyssinia[…]. When fresh it is yellowish-white in colour, but on exposure to the air this becomes darker and the mass assumes a harder consistence. The odour is disgustingly obnoxious, but like many odours of animal origin it becomes very pleasant and attractive on extreme dilution.

Civet is a glandular secretion appearing in an outwardly dis- charging pocket (two sacs) underneath the posterior appendage of both male and female civet cat-Viverra civetta, a native of Abyssinia, Guinea, and Senegal.

Civet has long been employed as a perfume and one of its earliest uses was in the perfuming of gloves by Italians and Spaniards It is used to-day almost exclusively as a fixative

More recently the Grasse houses have put on the market absolute civet. This is prepared by extracting the animal product with a volatile solvent, filtering out the insoluble matter, removing the dissolved fats by freezing and concentrating the resultant solution in vacuo. It occurs as a black or deep brown viscous liquid having the typical odour familiar to all perfumers. For use it is merely diluted with alcohol or an odourless solvent. It is a very convenient method of handling this otherwise objectionable product.

^{W. A. Poucher. The Raw Materials Of Perfumery, London: Chapman And Hall, 1974, pp. 110–111.}