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Scent making: an act of writing or composing?

Smell is a word, perfume is literature.- Jean-Claude Ellena's The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur Although perfumers are traditionally compared to musical composers, I have always felt like a writer of smells. - as above For one year, French perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena kept a diary of his life as 'parfumeur exclusif' (exclusive perfumer) for Hermès. In this book, Ellena shares his thoughts on the art of perfumery and the relationships between fragrances and emotions. He provides a unique perspective on the role of the perfumer in creating fragrances and the challenges of working with raw materials to create accords. When I came across his writing, I couldn't help but wonder: What makes perfumers...

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Mengting Zhuo: an interview with our artist in residence

In the summer of 2022, we were approached by Mengting Zhuo a performance artist whose work truly blew us away, and to our delight connected with us with an interest in joining our residence programme. She has now been with us for a little over 3 months! In this interview we invite Mengting to share her story, her art and her secret psychic ability to read people.  Hi Mengting, it’s so lovely to have you with us, can you tell us a little bit more about how you found yourself in London? I’ve been living in London since 2015. This is a city where I feel I can be whoever I like to be - because no one really cares!...

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The process and making of our new perfume range SOUND

How does one make a perfume inspired by sound? This is the question that drove Aequill’s resident artist Ecka Mordecai to develop three unique fragrances for the perfume house's debut release, and to develop an unusual and innovative approach to perfume composition.The upcoming range - eloquently entitled ‘Sound’ - explores the act of listening and a process of merging scent and sound into fine perfume. Phase one: listening In honour of Aequill’s birthplace, I walked the streets of East London, deeply listening to the local soundscape and recording fragments of its essence using a combination of field recording and creative writing. Sound and scent share the quality of transience, so I chose to walk, slowly and methodically through different neighbourhoods...

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The inspiration behind aequill's new artisan perfumes: SOUND

The fascinating thing about the senses is that whilst we think of them as belonging to five distinct categories connected to five body parts, our experience of them is far more sophisticated. We find examples of deaf musicians playing through vibrational touch (Evelyn Glennie), artists painting sound (Paul Klee) and cultures that have a different colour for each day of the week (Thailand). One long summer’s evening, I was watching the dancing flame of aequill’s Juniperberry & Cerdarwood candle, breathing in it’s mysterious balsamic aroma, when I decided to compose a piece of music for solo ‘cello that captured the essence of the scent, entitled ‘Study of a Flame’. Whilst recording, I felt myself becoming the flame, the sounding wood...

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Our artist in residence: an interview with Ekaterina Adelskaya

My name is Jintana, it has always been my dream to create beautiful and thoughtful pieces of work in collaboration with talented people. I met Ekaterina (or Kate as we now know her) after being introduced through Ecka, (read her interview here.) Ecka was the first to join our artist in residence programme back in 2020. After seeing Kate's stunning work, I quickly noticed our shared interests in materials. In this interview I deep dive into her thinking, her work for aequill, inspirations and how she intends on taking over the art world. Could you tell us about working with aequill? I’ve always been interested in scents. Fragrance composition, for me, is a true art form, so naturally, I’m excited to...

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