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A Guide to Slow Sniffing

The British Tate gallery network offers visitors to their website a concise guide text "A guide to slow looking". It is an encouragement full of tips and techniques on how to look, how to observe a work of art (a painting or a sculpture) in depth, so as to create a more personal connection with it. It is based on the assumption that if we really want to get to know a given artistic object, we need to spend an appropriate amount of time with it (the time recommended by Tate is 10 minutes to start with). More in the linked article.

If a similar guide on insightful smelling were to be created, it would certainly draw inspiration from the thoughts of Edmond Roudnitska (1905–1996), collected in his chapter "The Art of Perfumery" from the book (reprint from 1994) – "Perfumes: art, science, and technology" (edited by P. M. Müller and D. Lamparsky).

Roudnitska was not only an amazing artist but also – as the aforementioned chapter proves – a wonderful theoretician of the art of perfumery.

I will present some of these observations below, trying not to lose the meaning of the Master's words in translation, yet I realize that sometimes the subtle sense of his arguments may escape me – as an amateur – given his over 60 years of perfumery experience at the time he wrote this chapter, and, of course, linguistic nuances.

So – how to smell perfumes so that it is a celebration and an experience that adds quality to our lives?

One should not reduce the evaluation of perfumes merely to the category of pleasant/unpleasant – a hedonistic reaction, because, as the author believed, the philosophy of immediate pleasure is a negation of arduous preparations, intellectual effort, creative constraints, all devotion that requires sacrifice.

And even if a person experienced in their reception cannot avoid an initial subjective emotional reaction (the connection between smell, and thus perfumes, and emotions deserves a separate discussion), they will be able to move beyond it to an objective, technical assessment of the value and use of the constituent elements of the composition. They will focus on the aesthetic qualities of the form, which should be treated as a whole.

Whether, precisely, as a whole, it is: inconsistent or homogeneous; boring or authentic; whether it gives an impression of harmony (according to Roudnitska, the pursuit of harmony is what connects perfumery with music and painting); possesses character or is flat; dynamic without being overwhelming; recognizable.

Correct interpretation, regardless of the sense, is a matter of practice, taste, education, and experience, and therefore a perfumery apprentice must develop their taste in conjunction with other arts. Similarly, their intuition will develop. At the same time, the author reassures that anyone interested in their own development in perfumery can engage in it with comparable difficulty as in other arts. However, it takes a little longer due to the complexity of the materials used and their combinations.

If we lack words to describe an olfactory impression, this is a natural situation that also applies to other fields of art. We can then refer to words we use for our other senses. We can look for impressions in another field that will, through association, create a new message. For example, describing colors (soft, pale, violent, cold, warm, flat, neutral, cheerful, sentimental, garish, mahogany, orange…); we can compare them to what we know from nature (herbal, floral, woody, animalic), from music, mathematics, or even the human voice (which can be warm or metallic, deep, thundering, sharp, angry, high, cracking…).

Roudnitska also reminds us that we describe perfumes as light when they are rich in volatile substances that seem to dissipate; fresh when they contain ingredients such as bergamot, lemon, or mint; green when they resemble a mown lawn and leaves crushed in the hands. Heavy perfumes need time to evaporate because they are composed of persistent ingredients like vanillin, patchouli, sandalwood, and labdanum. Describing perfumes is a field that also requires practice.

And finally, a beautiful quote:

And we shall never have the same state of mind twice since the current minute is related to the memory of all passed minutes and since the future minute will relate to current ones, and so on. Therefore, the same stimulus cannot provoke the same sensation twice. And that is why, Madame, you will find that your perfume is not what it was yesterday. But there is nothing we can do to change that.

(I nigdy dwa razy nie będziemy mieć tego samego stanu umysłu, ponieważ bieżąca minuta jest związana z pamięcią wszystkich minionych minut, a przyszła minuta będzie się odnosić do tych bieżących i tak dalej. Dlatego ten sam bodziec nie może dwukrotnie wywołać tego samego odczucia. I dlatego, Madame, przekonasz się, że twoje perfumy nie są tym, czym były wczoraj. Ale nic nie możemy zrobić, aby to zmienić.)

My latest discovery from Roudnitska's compositions is Eau D'Hermes (1951) for the Hermes brand, and the impression it gives me – Coca-Cola with lemon (to the point of feeling gas bubbles) sipped slowly on a stuffy day by a hotel pool. People around are having a good time, and what turns out later is that everyone used the same kind of sunscreen, which covers the skin with a thick, impermeable layer.

Therefore, if I'm in Warsaw (even on a hot day) and want to mentally transport myself to a resort on the Mediterranean or Adriatic Sea, I visit Hermes to take Eau D'Hermes home on a blotter. Walking further, I pass the Bolesław Prus bookstore with a window displaying foreign books and press, and head to the National Museum to the 19th-Century Art Gallery. I then feel like a tourist. Something wonderful!

Hotel Europejski, view from Krakowskie Przedmieście, the Hermes store is on the corner, where you can explore their perfume offer. May 2022, photo by the author of the text

Sources:

  1. Link to the Tate guide – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/guide-slow-looking
  2. The book from which the chapter written by Edmond Roudnitska comes: "Perfumes: art, science, and technology" edited by P. M. Müller and D. Lamparsky, reprint from 1994, Springer Science+Business Media, Dordrecht.
  3. You can read more about E.R. here:
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