Pochet: 400 Years of Perfume Bottle Glassmaking

“Every constraint opens up creativity.”

Irène Gosset, president of Groupe Pochet (2023)

When we pick up a perfume bottle, we first notice its outline and colour. Yet even with the same outline, a different base thickness or interior cavity changes how the perfume appears. A transparent bottle, too, is designed around where light passes and how the liquid is seen.

Pochet is a French manufacturer whose work has been to bring those designs into glass production at scale. With the bottle-making company Pochet du Courval at its centre, the group brings together expertise in plastics, metal, decoration and accessories. Following the story of this business, whose name is less familiar than the perfumes it contains, reveals the many specialist decisions that lie between a designer’s drawing and a bottle we can pick up in a shop.

Key facts and how the group divides its work
From a forest glassworks to perfume-bottle manufacturing
1. The glassworks of 1623 and a Paris finishing workshop
2. Bringing the companies together and automating production
From design to production: moulds and glass distribution
How the techniques change for thin and complex bottles
1. Idôle’s 15 mm profile and Gabrielle’s thin walls
2. Phantom’s robot: separating forming from decoration
The people and factories behind decoration and quality
How recycled glass and electric furnaces change production
1. Using household glass for Chanel N°5
2. The electric furnace commissioned in 2025 and the people learning to use it
References

Key facts and how the group divides its work

Origins: the founding of the Courval glassworks by François Le Vaillant in 1623
Main glassmaking site: Guimerville, in Hodeng-au-Bosc, Normandy, France
Main activities: development and manufacture of perfume and cosmetics containers, decoration and components
Official website: Groupe Pochet

Pochet and Pochet du Courval refer to different parts of the business. The group currently presents four divisions. Pochet du Courval makes glass bottles and jars; Qualipac produces plastic and metal components; Aura makes accessories, decorative items and boxes; and Solev specialises in complex colouring and metallic decorative finishes.

Decoration is not confined to Solev, however. Pochet du Courval and Qualipac also have decorative capabilities. When we describe a perfume bottle as being made by Pochet, the site involved depends on whether we mean the glass body, the cap or the surface finish.

From a forest glassworks to perfume-bottle manufacturing

The glassworks of 1623 and a Paris finishing workshop

The story began in the forests of Normandy’s Bresle valley. In 1623, Catherine de Clèves gave François Le Vaillant permission to operate a glassworks at a place called Courval in the forest of Eu.

A second line of history runs through the company’s present name: Maison Deroche, founded in Paris by Pierre Deroche in 1783. Having expanded from painting porcelain into finishing glass, the company established a relationship with the Courval glassworks. In 1883, following the marriage of Jean-Baptiste Pochet and Estelle Deroche, it became Maison Pochet.

A regional factory that shaped glass and a Paris company that finished it: together, they laid the foundations of the later business. The bottle for Guerlain’s Eau de Cologne Impériale, made in 1853, is an important example connecting the glassworks’ history with perfume. The fragrance’s creation is explored in the article on Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain. Here, its significance is as a moment when the glassworks realised a bottle designed specifically for a perfumer.

Bringing the companies together and automating production

Charles Colonna de Giovellina, who took over management in 1919, expanded the business with his brother Marcel. In 1934, Maison Pochet acquired all the shares in Courval, and the company took the name Verreries Pochet et du Courval. The year 1623 marks the origins of the glassworks, rather than the adoption of that company name.

In 1971, a factory was built at Guimerville to make the manufacturing process fully automated. The establishment of Qualipac in 1991 and the acquisition of Solev in 2011 brought components and finishes beyond glass into the business. Today, the group works on the complete container, combining different materials as well as forming the bottle itself.

From design to production: moulds and glass distribution

Shaping the interior and the passage of light

With a glass bottle, its outer silhouette and the interior cavity that holds the perfume must be considered separately. How much glass gathers at the base or shoulders changes both the visual weight of the transparent material and the shape of the liquid inside. Pochet du Courval identifies control of both the exterior and interior forms as a cornerstone of its expertise.

Its proprietary modelling tool, Morphoz, helps with that process. Rather than simply producing an attractive rendering of the finished object, it incorporates the constraints of Pochet’s glassmaking and decoration processes. Before a prototype is made, the tool can assess glass distribution within the bottle, light passing through its shoulders and base, and the interaction between the liquid’s colour and the lacquer. The company’s account describes its use in developing the glass distribution of the Fenty bottle and the metallic decoration and laser work on Sisley’s Izia.

A transparent container takes on certain qualities only once it is filled. Anticipating those qualities in a form that can be manufactured helps reduce the back-and-forth between design and production.

Preparing the moulds and shaping hot glass

Transferring a design to a mould does not finish the work. In its account of Pochet du Courval’s craft, the French glass industry federation explains how precise mould adjustments and careful maintenance underpin the quality of the bottles blown inside them. Consistency in mass production depends on tools that are repeatedly put in order.

At Guimerville, molten glass is fed into forming machines one drop at a time. A blank mould creates the initial form, followed by a finishing mould that shapes the bottle. The surface is then refined by reheating before the bottle enters an annealing lehr. Annealing removes the internal stresses left in the glass. A freshly formed bottle cannot simply be treated as a finished product.

The 21 sampling rounds behind Jour d’Hermès

The Jour d’Hermès bottle, designed by Pierre Hardy, shows the extent of this fine-tuning. Drawing on a traditional bottle shape reminiscent of Hermès carriage lanterns, it makes the thickness of transparent glass a major element of its design.

According to Pochet’s account, published in 2014, developing five sizes required 42 drawings and 21 sampling rounds. The 85 mL bottle weighs 450 g. Glass distribution was adjusted to maintain the visual balance between glass and perfume across the different sizes, and more than one million bottles were reportedly produced for the launch.

Screen printing applied in reverse on the back, and read through the glass, also contributes to the bottle’s optical effect. Thick glass alone cannot produce the same result. Where should its weight sit? How large should the liquid appear, and how should that relationship be maintained across sizes? The challenge was to translate these decisions into a repeatable manufacturing process.

How the techniques change for thin and complex bottles

Idôle’s 15 mm profile and Gabrielle’s thin walls

Making glass appear less substantial presents a different set of challenges. Pochet cites Lancôme‘s Idôle as an example of a bottle just 15 mm thick. That measurement describes the overall depth of the bottle, not the thickness of its glass walls.

Chanel’s Gabrielle is another bottle Irène Gosset has discussed in relation to thinness. In her 2023 account, the aim was for the perfume to appear suspended, with the bottle seeming almost invisible while remaining robust.

This lightness contrasts with the thick glass of Jour d’Hermès. Pochet’s work is not tied to a single style of substantial bottle. It can increase or diminish the glass’s presence according to the appearance a brand wants to achieve.

Phantom’s robot: separating forming from decoration

For Phantom, launched under the Paco Rabanne name, the challenges lay in the robot-shaped outline, its reliefs and angles, and the thickness of its different parts. Pochet du Courval formed the glass. Solev created the metallic appearance.

Solev used metallisation, a decorative process that deposits a thin metal film on the surface, then removed parts of that film with a laser to reveal the letter R. The silver appearance does not mean the entire bottle is metal. The technology that creates the three-dimensional outline works alongside another that makes its surface resemble a different material.

In its 2022 account of making Fame, Pochet highlighted control of thickness, reliefs and angles, together with the fine detailing of a couture-inspired dress and high-heeled boots. Behind the approachable figure-shaped bottle is the work of forming small details without blurring them.

The people and factories behind decoration and quality

Bringing bottle, cap and decoration together

Olympéa Blossom provides a clear example of how the divisions share the work. Pochet du Courval’s Guimerville site made the glass body; Qualipac’s Aurillac site produced the cap, assembled from multiple components; and Solev carried out the metallisation of the laurel decoration.

The finished object appears as a whole, but its components are made in different ways. Bringing their shapes and finishes into alignment requires the knowledge of people who process plastics and metal as well as glassmakers. The group’s move into multiple materials brought those points of contact within the business.

Reaching the recesses of a curved surface

The finishing work Pochet calls parachèvement includes lacquering, screen printing, pad printing, hot stamping and laser processing. It can create graduated colour, leave selected areas transparent or expose a colour beneath the surface. Decoration involves more than adding colour once the form is complete.

In 2020, Emmanuel Rohant and Mohamed El Fazazi, working at the Gamaches decoration site, described the demands of pad printing on complex Jean Paul Gaultier bottles:

“We have to reach into every recess of the glass.”

Emmanuel Rohant, finishing director, and Mohamed El Fazazi, production manager

At the same time, they described working with customers to meet quality specifications as spray coatings changed from solvent-based to water-based formulations. Changing a coating involves more than substituting a colour. It means achieving the required finish with a new material.

Precision by hand and inspection by camera

Gamaches also retains the craft of decorating Guerlain’s bee bottles by hand. A 2020 report from the site explained that staff need six months to master the brushwork used on the bees and stoppers. What matters here is less the familiar story of a perfume’s origins than the time needed to pass on a manual skill within a factory.

The industry federation’s account of the same site describes how the material must be adjusted to a consistency that lets the brush move easily, and how the applied decoration is then fired. The precision of handwork depends on more than the moment when the brush touches the glass.

At Guimerville, meanwhile, cooled bottles pass through camera-equipped inspection lines to check conformity and detect defects. A 2025 account of the equipment described further automation in sorting, packing and related operations. Fine handwork and machine inspection are different stages supporting the same product.

How recycled glass and electric furnaces change production

Using household glass for Chanel N°5

When recycled glass is used in perfume bottles, clarity and colour control are important. In a joint announcement in September 2021, Chanel and Pochet presented a material containing 15% post-consumer glass collected from households. Its first application was that year’s 100 mL N°5 Eau de Parfum. This does not mean that every N°5 bottle, from every period, shares that specification.

The announcement explained that two years of joint work had established processes for washing and sorting broken glass and removing impurities. Beyond mixing in recovered glass, the project involved controlling the raw-material stream itself to retain the clarity needed to display the perfume.

“We must then reinvent ourselves at every stage of the production chain.”

Irène Gosset, president of Groupe Pochet (2023)

These words followed her explanation that changing a material requires reconsidering every process in which it is used. Responding to environmental demands involves more than adding a single material to an existing process.

The electric furnace commissioned in 2025 and the people learning to use it

A new electric furnace entered service at Guimerville in February 2025 and was inaugurated on 13 and 14 March. According to its designer and supplier, Fives, it replaced a conventional gas furnace with a Prium E-Melt vertical electric melter, in which a layer of raw materials covers the top.

Pochet’s 2025 report states that it can halve energy consumption per tonne of glass melted compared with a conventional gas furnace. This is the company’s performance figure for the process, rather than a claim that the impact of a finished perfume bottle over its entire life cycle is halved. It is also important to distinguish the electrification of the melting furnace from the downstream feeders that use a mix of energy sources.

The change in equipment also required people to learn new skills. According to the same report, more than 12,000 hours of training were devoted to technical and melting teams, including hands-on learning with SGD Pharma, which already operates an electric furnace. In the 2025 Emballage Digest account, technical director André Frezel also described the work of planning the factory layout and flows around the new equipment.

“3D simulation was a valuable help.”

André Frezel, technical director of Pochet du Courval

The people who prepare the moulds, handle the flow of glass, transfer patterns onto curved surfaces and check the finish all make it possible for the same perfume-bottle form to reach us time after time. Looking again at a bottle’s base or shoulders, or at the way its lettering appears, reveals how perfume design continues from the first outline through all the work that makes production possible.