Fragrances · 2023
Vyse Street
Metal dust, workshop doors open, the end of a shift.
Black pepper
Lavender
Oakmoss · Sandalwood · Frankincense
£145 · 50 ml eau de parfum · 20% concentration
What it does over a day
The most concentrated thing we make and the least floral. It was drawn from the street the bench is on, which is a jewellery quarter and smells of solder and rain. Two of the six people on the panel would not wear it. That is a good sign.
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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Black pepper
4 h · Kerala, steam-distilled berry
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Lavender
14 h · Haute-Provence, distilled flowering tops
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Oakmoss
140 h · Balkan, absolute, IFRA-compliant fraction
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Sandalwood
220 h · Western Australia, plantation heartwood
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Frankincense
400 h · Dhofar, resin tears, hand-sorted
The other three
- Orris & Ash — Cold root over a fire that has gone out.
- The Long Afternoon — Cut grass, a white flower, and nowhere to be.
- Blotter Twelve — One material, undiluted by company.