|
Come smell, touch, read, imagine! Immerse yourself in beauty, slip into a world apart, a lost past. If only for an hour, allow yourself to step outside of time. Learn and experience the history of fragrance. Every item in the Archive is authentic and original, including the hand-tinted postcards and engravings, some of which date back four hundred years.
 A Selection of Exhibits
|
I fell in love with natural aromatics more than twenty-five years ago, and I have had the privilege to live and work in their world ever since. In my practice of perfumery, I have curated thousands of gorgeous essences from all over the world, many of them antiques themselves. They are all part of the extraordinary lineage of scent that reaches back to the beginnings of human culture and is entwined with the earliest history of medicine, cuisine, sexuality, adornment, and worship.
|
|
At the same time, my research and writing led me on a treasure hunt to hundreds of antique books and other artifacts that helped me to piece together the world in which perfumery took shape. I came to see my practice as an extension of the lost world I had discovered into the modern one. The books, engravings, essences, and raw materials I have collected have been a source of endless beauty and fascination and happiness to me, and I continue to be inspired by them every day.
|
 Cabinet of Curiosities
|
 Perfume Organ
|
At the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents you can smell more than three hundred natural essences derived from fruits, flowers, trees, grasses, and other natural sources (and take three samples home). Touch and smell the raw botanical materials that become perfume essences.Compare essences that have been aged for a century to their modern counterparts. Pore over more than fifty antique books from my collection, retracing the amazing history of fragrance.
|
Click for a video tour of Mandy showing you all the Archive exhibits!
|
