Writing about perfume, and smells in general, is one of the greatest challenges for a journalist/author: how to evoke scents, with words…? But over the years, quite a few have done so very, very successfully. And if you want to build a ‘perfume bookshelf’, to deepen your knowledge of perfumery, start here…
We’ve awarded each title stars out of five, as a guide to which we think are the most important, and the all-round best reads. Nothing less than a three-star book is feataured here, though – so we reckon any of them are a worthwhile read.
As you become ever-more-obsessed (and we know how that feels), you may want to add to your collection – and of course, we’ll add to this section whenever new releases catch our eye…
We’d always prefer you support an independent bookstore rather than One-Clicking on Amazon – these indie stores can happily order most in-print books. However, in a super-busy world, we know it isn’t always practical. (And if you’re happy to buy secondhand – most titles are available via Amazon – this does often support smaller bookstores.)
Looking for out-of-print perfume titles in secondhand bookstores can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, meanwhile. If you’re in a hurry, we generally recommend abebooks.com, which links thousands of secondhand bookstores around the world, while Amazon can be a source for remaindered books…
Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris
Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, by Christopher Kemp. Rich, sexy, earthy and enticing: this precious ingredient is prized by perfumers, yet can’t be ‘harvested’: it’s simply washed up randomly on beaches, being a by-product of the whale’s digestive process. (Not so long ago, a stroller on a Dorset beach found a lump of ambergris, alleged to be worth up to £80,000.) Christopher Kemp has woven a fascinating tale around a single fragrance element, bringing to life ambergris’s place in fragrance history and creation. A book to make beachcombers of all of us.
Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers
Floriography by Jessica Roux, published by Simon & Schuster
Exploring the secret, coded significance of various blooms through history, Jessica Roux presents a beautifully illustrated book of fragrant posy suggestions – from flowers to proffer a specific message to a prospective lover, to those one should an enemy... perhaps with a copy of this book, if you want to make sure your message gets through loud and clear?
Described as a 'full-color guide to the historical uses and secret meanings behind an impressive array of flowers and herbs,' there is such delight to be found its pages, and one cannot but help construct imaginary floral messages to foes or scandalously salacious love letters 'written' in this fascinating historical code! Something we particularly enjoyed were the many suggestions of flowers to pair, adding further layers of mysterious significance to a bouquet – rather than a single meaning of a bloom.
The language of flowers is centuries long, floral mythology and cultural significance reaching back as far as history itself; but it really hit its peak with the always nostalgic and whimsical Victorians in the 19th century, particularly in England and within the United States. In these times, the importance of etiquette could not be understated – and sending the incorrect bouquet might have resulted in faces as red as the roses you'd innocently gifted. We have to remember that really, such strict social guidelines were enforced to reign in any unwanted displays of open emotion (unthinkable!) and so such coded ways of communicating were commonplace. And yet, where strictness prevails, so too do romantic fancies entangle every possible method of expressing oneself...
The Victorians were notoriously harsh in their 'rules' about what types of fragrance (particularly women) should use, where they should apply it, how much and how often. You can read more about this – and other eras' perfumed proclivities – in our dedicated section on Perfume History; but for full-on floral charm, the scented snippets researched and illustrated by talented artist Jessica Roux, makes this a wonderful book for any flower-lover – and you'll surely be dropping the floral facts you've gleaned from it into conversations for years to come.
The publishers suggest this is a perfect gift, and we certainly agree – but how much more interesting that gift would be if accompanied by a meaningfully put-together floral arrangement, don't you think...?
Forage: Wild Plants to Gather and Eat by Liz Knight, iluustrated by Rachel Pedder-Smith [Laurence King Publishing]
There's a whole world of edible plants growing around us, but if the closest you've ever been to foraging for food is scrumping apples (or more recently, scrabbling at the red-stickered items in your supermarket's Reduced section), you need this beautiful book. Although the publishers say 'Anybody can enjoy the increasingly popular back-to-nature activity of foraging', the truth is, very few of us feel confident enough to start picking some of the foliage we see on our daily walks. Thanks to Liz's clear descriptions, and the stunning botanical illustrations of Rachel Pedder-Smith, the identification is made far easier and reading this, you'll really feel encouraged to explore and diversify with wild ingredients. What's more, it'll certainly make you look at flowers in a different way – from pickled cherry blossoms, linden leaf madeleines, dandelion petal cake to damson and rose petal preserves, the accompanying recipes sound like a feast for all the senses.
Nowadays we're perhaps becoming used to seeing 'foraged food' celebrated on menus of fine dining restaurants, but really Liz wants everyone to feel confident enough to try their hand at picking ingredients growing wild locally. Nowadays, Liz's life is spent searching the local hedgerows in search of scrumptious finds, and we're sure that reading this book will sew some more seeds of the passion for foraging and let them bloom.
4160 Tuesdays founder and perfumer Sarah McCartney successfully “crowd-funded” a project to create four new scents that truly had a story to tell. On the website IndieGoGo, she asked the perfume loving public to pre-order the fragrances so they could afford the expensive ingredients to make them. Uniquely, each of the Four Mysteries scents came with its own 1930’s “cosy crime” inspired story when you purchase the 100ml size bottle, but now the paperback is published to purchase alone. The Search for Flora Psychedelica - a tale of botany and skulduggery; The Mystery of The Buddhawood Box - Horatio Kimble had sailed for Australia to seek his fortune. Twenty years later, his lawyers invite the relatives to a meeting; Up the Apples & Pears - Cissy and Dotty Shuttleworth defend their London pub from an unscrupulous property developer, and Captured by Candlelight - when the lights go out at Dolderbury Hall a portrait goes missing, but which one was it? A concept as quirky and delightful as the fragrances themselves, we loved snuggling up with this book of scent-inspired sleuthing.
Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent, by Mandy Aftel
Pioneering natural perfumer, writer Mandy Aftel is a force of nature herself, an inspiration to many, and now even has her own museum. The 'Aftel Archive of Curious Scents' is located in a building adjacent to her home in California, where you can see Aftel's incredible, custom-made perfumer's 'organ' of ingredients, smell more than three hundred natural essences and even choose three samples to take home. But it's Aftel's incredible way with words we first fell in love with, even before smelling her radiant scents. In Fragrant, Aftel explores scent literacy, taking five pillars of the perfumed world and tracing their history (and our own sense of familiarity or exoticism with each ingredient). From cinnamon and the Spice Trail to the healing properties of mint, from the mysticism of frankincense to the mythology surrounding ambergris, and our addiction to the radiance of jasmine. We come away with a true feeling for Aftel's passion, and for the many years of research and experience behind this exquisite book – filled to the brim with knowledge, recipes and lovely line drawings.
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