Atlas Obscura - Places Newsletter

Follow your nose to AO Courses 👃🌹

07-11-2024

Upcoming Seminar | Up to 30 Participants

Making Scents:
Experimental Perfumery
with S askia Wilson-Brown

Starts: Monday, July 15 (Session A) and Monday, August 19 (Session B)

What's that wafting in the air? The rich, complex, perfect-for-summer scent of your next favorite AO course!

Next week's experimental perfumery will provide an expansive overview of perfumery that introduces the technical and foundational information you'll need for your practice. Starting with important social context for the global history of perfumery, the class will go on to cover fragrance families and taxonomies, materials of natural and synthetic origin, diluents, and the basics for a safe and happy practice. Importantly, we'll do the hard, fun work of smelling, discussing each material in the kit through an intensive process of sensorial evaluation.

Finally, we'll create several introductory perfume formulas, and gain an understanding of how to expand from there. Get your noses ready and let's explore the challenging, technical, and magical world of perfumery!

Syllabus At A Glance:

Session 1 | Lab Basics: Safety, tools, and fragrance families
Session 2 | Materials and Strategies
Session 3 | Industry: Mainstream vs. artisan practice

Join Us In The Lab

Meet Your Instructor:
Saskia Wilson-Brown is the founder and director of The Institute for Art and Olfaction (IAO), a non-profit devoted to access and experimentation in the field of perfumery. She launched the Art and Olfaction Awards in 2013, an international awards mechanism for independent perfumers. She also launched Open Sourcing Smell Culture in 2018, an initiative devoted to open source principles in perfumery.

In her courses, Saskia provides a humor-laced, facts-based introduction to the art and science of working with scent that also serves as an intensive primer for what we hope will become your favorite new practice. Learn more about Saskia and her fascinating work here.

Student Testimonials: Experimental Perfumery

"This class was interesting and informative. Saskia was a terrific speaker and host! The kit was also super helpful and fun. I enjoyed every minute of class AND the homework. Thank you!" - Ann B.
"LOVE Saskia. Her approach to sharing perfumery knowledge is refreshing and relatively unheard of in the industry. So glad to have gotten to take part in this." - Alec L.