My intrigue with perfumery began when I first dabbled in the magical elixirs of perfume enshrined upon my dear grandmother’s art deco dressing vanity.  Those perfect precious juices locked inside glistening crystal and glass vessels on a gold gilded mirrored antique tray beckoned. Of course, these were forbidden to play with for little curious girls.

On special days grandma would let me sample each of them. One by one I would slowly spritz these treasures onto paper scraps and my soul would dance with fire. How exquisitely beautiful they all were. Some bottles evoked images of foreign and exotic lands filled with rare spices. Others wafted clean and crisp visions of  spring fields of hyacinths and white lilies dotted with fresh dew. A few were so mysterious that my overwhelmed childlike imagination could only gasp in wondrous awe.

Scent is the most peculiar sense. Children are taught to develop the other senses and by adulthood we can easily label angora sweaters with the words soft, supple, and fuzzy when we touch them. With our eyes we can label the objects in the world around us. Our ears process music and speech and we can describe what we hear accurately. Sweet and sour are universally understood concepts we master to describe tastes. As much as scent is a part of our lives, for most people it is still the primal and undeveloped sense.

We are many times at a loss to name the many facets of a fragrance without years of training and study.  Our olfactory receptors make up the largest chunk of the human genome at 3% yet most people never receive formal training to develop this mystifying sense. More space is devoted in our genetic makeup to our sense of smell than any of the other senses.  Why then does our culture not place more emphasis on the study and science of scents?