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Our weddings smell of saffron rice, rose water and cardamom. Now I'm learning the proper names, I see saffron filed under leather on here, not with the spices. Why? To me it smells of hay and a bit of metal, like a handful of coins.
Saffron
Rose
Cardamom
ambrose_leather A good hide fresh off the tanner's lorry has that same dry, slightly medicinal edge, so I can see it. The club's page on saffron's hay and leather…
No roses open here yet, so I rub a leaf of the rose geranium on my windowsill between my fingers. It tides me over until the first buds open.
Geranium
Rose
Fun fact, with a source: the encyclopedia's history of perfume names Tapputi, recorded on a Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet dated 1200 BCE, as an early perfume maker, and credits Avicenna with distilling oils from flowers, starting with rose. So here's a little…
Frankincense
Rose
Tonka bean
Coumarin
carys.cardiff Frankincense: church, candle wax, lemon peel. Rose water: Turkish delight, my nan's soap. Tonka: hay, almond, warm biscuits.
Studio notes: the farm stand down the road has its pumpkins out, so I carved a test one on the wedging table. The inside smells nothing like pie. Raw pulp is cucumber and melon rind, wet and green, closer to fresh slip then to anything sweet. The seeds just…
Ginger
Cinnamon
Clove
teddy.tonka The pumpkin spice we shake on lattes has no pumpkin in it at all. Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove.
Hello friends, I go home to Seville for Christmas and I want to bring my mother a scent. She has always loved the orange blossom water she puts in her cakes, and the trees in our street in spring. Is it too obvious to give her orange blossom again, or is that…
Orange blossom
Neroli
kemi.cocoa Not obvious if it's what she loves. You'd be telling her you noticed.
Studio notes: at the end of summer I split my everyday citrus cologne into two little bottles. One went on the kiln-room windowsill, one in a drawer. Smelled them side by side tonight. The drawer one is still bright. The sill one is flat, a bit sour, and…
jess.in.philly That's what a turned bottle looks like: flatter, a bit off, darker than it should be. Your sill bottle got the light and the heat, the drawer got…
Class no. 2 · 6 min read
The fragrance pyramid sorts a perfume's materials by how fast they evaporate: top notes go first, heart notes carry the theme, base notes stay longest. You'll learn to read one, test it on a paper strip and spot what it leaves out.
ok so I work the line at a place in Brooklyn, black pepper and toasted cumin all shift long. turns out perfume uses half my spice rack and now your stuck with me. zero training, lots of opinions
Black pepper
Pink pepper
priya.cardamom Welcome, Dex! A cook's nose is a great place to start. The spice crowd hangs out in the Ambers, Spices and Gourmands circle , come say hi. Over to…
Aye, the winter casks are out in the shop and folk who come in are already asking for something that smells of Christmas. Is it too early for cinnamon and clove? Or does the season start when your nose says so?
Cinnamon
Clove
Coumarin
dex_in_brooklyn pumpkin spice hit the coffee shops here in august. your already late
Total beginner. Everyone here seems to know whether they're woody or floral or whatever. How did you work out which family you like?
nell.wattle Okay, nerd moment: there isn't one official list. The French perfumers' society uses seven families, which is what the club's Class on the seven…
Piñon smoke on the school run this morning, and the farolito bags are already stacked by the school office. Santa Fe starts smelling like Christmas early.
Pine and fir
Had my buddy hand me black pepper and pink pepper with my eyes shut, first snow on the Front Range outside. Pink was easy, like a rose and a lemon drop. Black was hot and woody.
Black pepper
Pink pepper
dex_in_brooklyn ok so pink pepper crushed fresh smells like rosé and resin. you're onto something with the lemon drop
A friend gave me a blotter dipped in Ambroxan. Dry wood, a little salt, no top at all, only a low bass line, and the next evening the strip is still humming. I wanted to smell this since a long time. The club's page on Ambroxan and how it clings has the…
Ambroxan
Ambergris
frankie.incense Ambroxide, sold as Ambroxan, is made from sclareol, a component of clary sage oil , so your whale-ish bass line definately starts in a field of sage…
Class no. 1 · 6 min read
French perfumers sort fragrances into seven families, following the Société Française des Parfumeurs: citrus, florals, fougères, chypres, woody, ambers and leathers, each split into sub-families. You'll be able to place a scent on that map, translate it into the Fragrance Wheel used in shops, and spot where a family label stops helping.
Daft question from a primary teacher. Half the threads in here say amber and the other half say ambergris. Is the amber in a perfume the same thing as the whale stuff, or something else entirely? My Year 4s did whales today and now I can't stop wondering.
Ambergris
Labdanum
Ambroxan
dex_in_brooklyn ok so I always figured amber was just ambergris with the gris chopped off, like how we say mise for the whole station. your welcome to correct me
Studio notes: after a firing I walk round the block with no phone and just smell. Try it: ten minutes, same route out and back three smells on the way out, three on the way back no perfume words, only your own The way back is always different, like a pot that…
aroha.rain Out: salt, diesel, flax. Back: someone's barbecue, its spring so that counts.
Here's a thing. It's lashing on the bog road and I passed a crate of oranges outside the shop and I was straight back in my gran's kitchen in Oughterard, a basin of oranges on the table and a saucer of cloves and the two of us pushing them in until our thumbs…
Clove
Sweet orange
kit.clove Cloves are half my username and I still had to look up pomander. Lovely memory.
Aye, a wee tip from behind the counter. Folk who come in buying for someone else do best when they leave with a dram in a sample jar and come back later with the person. Same with scent: two or three samples tucked in a card, and they choose the bottle…
kemi.cocoa Three little vials in a card feels more personal than one big box anyway.
