Fragrances · 2019
Orris & Ash
Cold root over a fire that has gone out.
Bergamot · Black pepper
Rose absolute · Orris
Oakmoss · Frankincense
£145 · 50 ml eau de parfum · 18% concentration
What it does over a day
The house fragrance, and the one everything else is measured against. It opens sharp and closes dry, and there is a forty-minute stretch in the middle where the orris is doing all of the work on its own. Some people find that stretch empty. We have left it in twice now.
The chart beside this paragraph is the same drawing as the rail at the edge of the page, at a larger size. Each line runs from the moment the blotter is dipped to the hour that material stops being legible, and stops there. Read left to right, it is the whole life of the fragrance on paper — and the gaps between the ends are where the thing you are wearing changes.
Panel readings are ORRISHAW's own, taken on 12 cm cellulose strips at 10% in perfumer's alcohol, in a room held at 20 °C. How we read a blotter.
In it
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Bergamot
2 h · Calabria, cold-pressed peel
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Black pepper
4 h · Kerala, steam-distilled berry
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Rose absolute
34 h · Isparta, absolute from the concrete
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Orris
62 h · Tuscany, rhizome aged six years
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Oakmoss
140 h · Balkan, absolute, IFRA-compliant fraction
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Frankincense
400 h · Dhofar, resin tears, hand-sorted
The other three
- The Long Afternoon — Cut grass, a white flower, and nowhere to be.
- Vyse Street — Metal dust, workshop doors open, the end of a shift.
- Blotter Twelve — One material, undiluted by company.