Issue 14 (the music issue!) of Nez is out: "The realms of music and perfume have long corresponded and echoed each other. How are these two immaterial modes of expression related? Nez takes you on an olfactory journey around the world through the prism of history, anthropology, science, art, literature, trade and marketing. The final destination? A greater understanding of the power that the sense of smell has in our lives." 160 pages, $35 at Luckyscent.
Everyone knows cheese can smell like stinky feet. But did you know parmesan can smell like pineapple, green teas carry a whiff of seashore, and Belgian beers share an aroma with Band-Aids and horse stables?
“Smell is a really interesting sense, maybe the most interesting sense, because it’s our most intimate and direct contact with the outside world,” said Harold McGee, author of the book “Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells.”
— Read more in What Harold McGee learned after decade of sniffing durian, keyboards, outer space at The Harvard Gazette.
A possibility for your 2023 reading list? Coming in April from Harvard University Press, Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life. "For centuries, scientists believed that living matter possessed a special quality—a spirit or essence—that differentiated it from nonliving matter. But by the nineteenth century, the scientific consensus was that the building blocks of one were identical to the building blocks of the other. Elixir tells the story of two young chemists who were not convinced, and how their work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife. In the 1830s, Édouard Laugier and Auguste Laurent were working in Laugier Père et Fils, the oldest perfume house in Paris. By day they prepared the perfumery’s revitalizing elixirs and rejuvenating eaux, drawing on alchemical traditions that equated a plant’s vitality with its aroma. In their spare time they hunted the vital force that promised to reveal the secret to life itself." $32.95 for the hardcover.
Issue 13 of Nez is out (160 pages, $29), as are two more ingredient issues, Cinnamon (not shown) and Immortelle: "Native to the Mediterranean Basin, immortelle is grown in the Balkans for perfumery. It owes its name to its tiny golden-yellow flowers, which never fade. Their dark, spicy, boozy scent conjures curry, sandy dunes or the Corsican maquis. Explore the many facets of this wildflower by journeying through botany, history, mixology, agriculture and chemistry without overlooking, of course, perfumes and perfumers." 96 pages, $25 at Luckyscent.
Patchouli was the fragrance of our generation. Smelling like the earth, undergrowth, youth, and freedom, it connected us to the imaginary world born of 19th-century Romanticism, when the word “patchouli” first appeared. In a commentary on Baudelaire, André Guyaux noted that the poet “didn’t need to go looking far for a little jar of heliotrope or tuberose, a bag of peau d’Espagne or a cashmere shawl redolent of patchouli cast on a sofa” to find himself spirited away. We, too, wanted an earthly paradise that wasn’t artificial.
— Perfumer Jean Claude Ellena, from his book Atlas of Perfumed Botany. Read more in A Master Perfumer's Reflections on Patchouli and Vetiver at MIT Press Reader.