Listening to Scent: An Olfactory Journey with Plants and their Extracts, by Jennifer Peace Rhind.
Like those of us at The Perfume Society, Jennifer Peace Rhind believes that the sense of smell can be cultivated and developed, and this book features exercises to help transform yours from the equivalent of a seven-stone weakling to an Ironman (or woman). Alongside sensory exercises, this 160-page volume explains how olfaction works, explores the odour families, looks at the language of scent, and the devotes the bulk of the book to identifying and exploring different smells – mostly via aromatherapy oils, as an alternative to fragrance ingredients from perfume houses. (Those are difficult for non-industry people to get their hands on.) There’s a ‘compare-and-contrast’ approach that encourages you to smell different ingredients beside each other, to develop your olfactory memory bank and vocabulary. Great for anyone looking to create natural fragrances of their own, or as a textbook for those of us who are always keen to boost our smelling skills and expertise.
Publisher: Singing Dragon
At Amazon
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