Fragrance From Another World


Book Description

Once upon a time, the world had changed. He was full of spirit, pointing at the rivers and mountains, laughing arrogantly at the Heaven's Pride. He had also once offered pointers to famous institutions, so how could reality be so difficult to enthuse about?




Paper Passion


Book Description

Paper Passion Perfume captures the unique bouquet of freshly printed books. Designed by boutique perfumer Geza Schoen in close consultation with Gerhard Steidl and in collaboration with Wallpaper* magazine, the perfume expresses that peculiar mix of paper and ink which gives a book its unmistakable aroma, along with the fresh scent which a book opened for the first time releases. Schoen spent days in the depths of the paper-filled Steidl headquarters in Göttingen, sifting through books, papers samples and inks, to find inspiration for a perfume that is true to books, wearable, and which ages well in time - just like a good book. It took Schoen seventeen trials to preserve in his words, "the right balance between the smell of paper as such and an enjoyable perfumistic aesthetic". The elaborate packaging of Paper Passion Perfume does more than justice to the perfume within. The packaging is a real book with a hidden cut-out compartment in which the bottle sits. The first pages of the book contain texts on the pleasures of paper and the Paper Passion project by Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, Karl Lagerfeld, Geza Schoen and Wallpaper* Editor-in-Chief Tony Chambers. The end product is a unique perfume, an homage to the luxurious sensuality of books and in Karl Lagerfeld's words, "the silent smell of paper".




Cult Perfumes


Book Description

Here, Tessa Williams documents more than 25 perfumeries and brands, ranging from the pharmacy of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, established by Dominican friars in 1221, and the classic English company Floris, founded in 1730, to the new eponymous range created by the famed fragrance expert Roja Dove.




The Lost Fragrance of Infinity


Book Description

Moin Mir is a London based writer of Indian origin. He began writing under the influence of his grandfather, a scholar of Sufism, Omar Khayyam and Mirza Ghalib. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Surat: Fall of a Port, Rise of a Prince. The Lost Fragrance of Infinity is his second book. Mir speaks frequently at leading international literature festivals on topics ranging from Sufism, history and travel writing.




The World at home


Book Description




Perfume


Book Description

A beautifully made scent can encapsulate a particular feeling, transport you to a very specific time in life with clarity, or remind you of a special loved one or friend. And just like wearing your favorite outfit or shoes, your favorite perfume can make you feel invincible. The question is, how do you find such a creation? With the number of new releases steadily increasing, it can be bewildering even attempting to find a perfume you like, let alone love. In Perfume, Neil Chapman guides readers through a world that can at times seem overwhelming. Fragrances of every variety are listed 'note by note' in clearly divided categories that will steer you in the direction of a perfume you not only like, but love and cherish as 'your' signature scent. Chapters explore popular notes (for example, vanilla, sandalwood, jasmine, rose, patchouli, chocolate) or a broader identifiable group (such as 'oceanics', 'green florals' or 'anti-perfume'), giving an insight into that particular category as well as a clear sense of the similarities and differences between the scents described within it. Featuring over 700 scents, from vintage perfumes to department store classics, rarities and niche boutique fragrances, Perfume is a true portal into the beautiful world of perfume. The further you go on this journey, the more you will be amazed by how many beautiful creations do exist if you take the time to look.




Fragrant


Book Description

Winner of the 2016 Perfumed Plume Award The “Alice Waters of American natural perfume” (indieperfume.com) and author of the Art of Flavor celebrates our most potent sense, through five rock stars of the fragrant world Mandy Aftel is widely acclaimed as a trailblazer in natural perfumery. Over two decades of sourcing the finest aromatic ingredients from all over the world and creating artisanal fragrances, she has been an evangelist for the transformative power of scent. In Fragrant, through five major players in the epic of aroma, she explores the profound connection between our sense of smell and the appetites that move us, give us pleasure, make us fully alive. Cinnamon, queen of the Spice Route, touches our hunger for the unknown, the exotic, the luxurious. Mint, homegrown the world over, speaks to our affinity for the familiar, the native, the authentic. Frankincense, an ancient incense ingredient, taps into our longing for transcendence, while ambergris embodies our unquenchable curiosity. And exquisite jasmine exemplifies our yearning for beauty, both evanescent and enduring. In addition to providing a riveting initiation into the history, natural history, and philosophy of scent, Fragrant imparts the essentials of scent literacy and includes recipes for easy-to-make fragrances and edible, drinkable, and useful concoctions that reveal the imaginative possibilities of creating with—and reveling in—aroma. Vintage line drawings make for a volume that will be a treasured gift as well as a great read.




Past Scents


Book Description

In this comprehensive and engaging volume, medical historian Jonathan Reinarz offers a historiography of smell from ancient to modern times. Synthesizing existing scholarship in the field, he shows how people have relied on their olfactory sense to understand and engage with both their immediate environments and wider corporal and spiritual worlds. This broad survey demonstrates how each community or commodity possesses, or has been thought to possess, its own peculiar scent. Through the meanings associated with smells, osmologies develop--what cultural anthropologists have termed the systems that utilize smells to classify people and objects in ways that define their relations to each other and their relative values within a particular culture. European Christians, for instance, relied on their noses to differentiate Christians from heathens, whites from people of color, women from men, virgins from harlots, artisans from aristocracy, and pollution from perfume. This reliance on smell was not limited to the global North. Around the world, Reinarz shows, people used scents to signify individual and group identity in a morally constructed universe where the good smelled pleasant and their opposites reeked. With chapters including "Heavenly Scents," "Fragrant Lucre," and "Odorous Others," Reinarz's timely survey is a useful and entertaining look at the history of one of our most important but least-understood senses.







Essence and Alchemy


Book Description

An artisan perfumer reveals a lost art and its mysterious, sensual history. For centuries, people have taken what seems to be an instinctive pleasure in rubbing scents into their skin. Perfume has helped them to pray, to heal, and to make love. And as long as there has been perfume, there have been perfumers, or rather the priests, shamans, and apothecaries who were their predecessors. Yet, in many ways, perfumery is a lost art, its creative and sensual possibilities eclipsed by the synthetic ingredients of which contemporary perfumes are composed, which have none of the subtlety and complexity of essences derived from natural substances, nor their lush histories. Essence and Alchemy resurrects the social and metaphysical legacy that is entwined with the evolution of perfumery, from the dramas of the spice trade to the quests of the alchemists to whom today's perfumers owe a philosophical as well as a practical debt. Mandy Aftel tracks scent through the boudoir and the bath and into the sanctums of worship, offering insights on the relationship of scent to sex, solitude, and the soul. Along the way, she imparts instruction in the art of perfume compositions, complete with recipes, guiding the reader in a process of transformation of materials that continues to follow the alchemical dictum solve et coagula (dissolve and combine) and is itself aesthetically and spiritually transforming.