ORRISHAW · A fragrance house · Birmingham
Orris & Ash
Cold root over a fire that has gone out.
Bergamot · Black pepper
Orris · Rose absolute
Oakmoss · Frankincense
Eau de parfum, 50 ml — £145 · Discovery set, five 2 ml — £22
A fragrance is a list of things leaving at different rates.
Everything in a bottle evaporates. What separates a perfume from a smell is that the parts leave in an order, and that the order was chosen. Bergamot is gone from a blotter in about two hours. Frankincense is still on the same blotter a fortnight later, which is why the two are never asked to do the same job.
We build every formula off that one number — how long each material stays legible on a paper strip, read by the same six people in the same room. The list on the left of this page is that accord, and it is thinning as you read. By the foot of the document there is one material left on it.
The readings below are ours. Substantivity moves with the lot, the dilution and the weather, so treat them as this house's panel rather than as a published standard. How we read a blotter.
Eleven materials, and how long each one stays.
Set in the voice of its tier: italic for the top, roman for the heart, spaced capitals for the base. The voice is not decoration — it is the only place on this site where you are told which third of the pyramid you are reading.
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Bergamot
Sharp, green, and gone before the kettle boils. Every accord we sell opens on it and none of them keeps it.
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Black pepper
Dry heat at the opening. It reads as lift rather than as spice, which is why it sits above the flowers and not inside them.
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Neroli
The longest of our top notes and still a top note. It carries the opening into the heart instead of dropping it there.
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Lavender
The hinge of the heart. Camphorous at the start of the day, soft by the afternoon, and it does the same on skin.
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Jasmine
Indolic, animal underneath, and it does not behave at low dilution. We work it at 1% and never above.
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Rose absolute
Three thousand flowers to the gram, so it is the most expensive line in the formula and the one we cut last.
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Orris
Six years in the loft before it is worth anything, and it still reads as powder rather than as root. It is why this house is named for it.
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Oakmoss
Inky and damp. It is the only material here we buy as a restricted fraction, and the fraction smells thinner than the whole.
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Sandalwood
Milky, and it takes an hour to say anything at all. On the blotter it is still there on the third day.
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Hay absolute
Coumarin, tobacco, the inside of a barn in August. It is the material that stops the base reading as furniture polish.
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Frankincense
The last one standing. Every blotter in this building still reads frankincense a fortnight after it was dipped.
The full material library, and the one plate on this site printed neat.
Two blotters that never settle.
Blotter Twelve
Frankincense on its own. There is nothing above it to leave, so the accord you smell at half an hour is the accord you smell on the third day. We sell it, and it is the only thing here where the rail on the left would end the page as it started.
Panel 41
Five base materials matched for tenacity, which was a deliberate mistake. Everything holds and then everything goes at once. It does not settle into anything, it just ends — and the chart is the fastest way to see why the trade calls that a flat composition.
Four fragrances.
- Orris & Ash Cold root over a fire that has gone out. £145 · 50 ml eau de parfum
- The Long Afternoon Cut grass, a white flower, and nowhere to be. £145 · 50 ml eau de parfum
- Vyse Street Metal dust, workshop doors open, the end of a shift. £145 · 50 ml eau de parfum
- Blotter Twelve One material, undiluted by company. £145 · 50 ml eau de parfum
From the bench
- Panel 41, and what a flat composition actually looks like We matched five base materials for tenacity to see what would happen. What happened was nothing, for six days, and then everything at once. 2026-07-30
- Why nobody smells anything neat At full strength almost every raw material reads the same way: loud. Ten percent is not a convention, it is the point at which a material starts telling you things. 2026-06-18
- The orris is late, and we are not substituting Six years in a loft before it is worth anything. The 2020 rhizome is short, the price is up forty percent, and Orris & Ash will be made in smaller batches instead. 2026-05-02