Fragrance house

Mary Chess

Mary Grace Chess Robinson founded the Mary Chess perfume company in 1932. Its early New York presence was recorded at 950 Lexington, where a 1932 account described the business as a new fragrance and bath-products company. Mary Chess was an American perfumer who had moved to London with her husband in 1920 and created her perfumes herself using natural ingredients. The house was a London-based perfumery with a New York outlet and was associated with Taylor of London. In 1991, it was acquired by The Fine Fragrances and Cosmetic Group of London. Chess-piece presentation bottles were a recurring design element, with figural examples documented from 1946 to 1948 and a star bottle produced between 1942 and 1956. Tapestry, introduced in 1934 as an oriental fragrance in a chess-bishop bottle and relaunched around 1991, is the house’s best-known documented scent.