About the bench
A fragrance house the size of a room.
Orrishaw is one perfumer and one assistant in a former jewellery workshop in Birmingham. We make four fragrances, in batches of 380 bottles, and we do every step ourselves.
The Jewellery Quarter has made small, precise things by hand for two hundred years. When we took the workshop at Unit 6 there were still solder marks on the benches, and the habits of the street rubbed off: work in small batches, weigh everything, and put your name on it.
We are named for orris — iris root that has to dry for six years before it is worth distilling. It is the slowest and most expensive material we buy, and it taught us the rule we still work by: if a material becomes hard to get, we make less, rather than make something different and call it the same.
Everything that leaves the bench has been weighed, rested for six weeks, checked on paper against the last batch and filled by one of two people. The batch number on the tag is written by hand, and if you ring, one of those two people answers.
Since 2017
2017 to now
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2017
The bench opens in a former jewellery workshop on Vyse Street, with one formula and a borrowed still.
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2019
Orris & Ash launches after two years and forty-one trial batches. It is still the house fragrance.
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2021
The Long Afternoon, and the refill service — because nobody needed a second heavy bottle.
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2023
Vyse Street, named for the road outside, at 20% our most concentrated fragrance.
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2024
Blotter Twelve: frankincense alone, because visitors kept asking what the base smelled like.
How we work
How a batch gets made
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Weighed
Every material is weighed to a hundredth of a gram, by hand, against the formula card.
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Rested
The concentrate matures for six weeks in amber glass before it meets any alcohol.
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Blotted
Each batch is checked on paper strips against the last one, over three days.
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Filled
Bottles are filled, sealed and tagged with a handwritten batch number.
Visit
Book a forty-minute consultation
Bench open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00–17:00. Scent consultations by appointment. Consultations take about forty minutes and are free if you buy a bottle.
Start with all four.
The discovery set is the easiest way to meet the house, and the £22 comes off your first bottle.