“Saints felt as much delight in the offensive odours which surround the sick and the infected as they would in a garden of the most fragrant flowers.” – ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
Category Archives: DICTUM
Feeling delight in offensive odours
“Saints felt as much delight in the offensive odours which surround the sick and the infected as they would in a garden of the most fragrant flowers.” – ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
Essence of love
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque,
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis
totum utte faciant, Fabulle, nasum – CATULLUS
Texts meeting practice
Perfumery is not just a matter of mixing aromatics in a vessel, but it is effectively a network, where texts meet practice, trade, geography, politics, and religion in a literal and material manner.” — James McHugh
The bathroom
“The bottle of perfume, which Marthe […] nonchalantly holds in her right hand, is the all-important barrier and go-between, positioned at that point of confrontation where body and light touch as they dramatically push and pull against each other. The bottle is filled with a liquid as yellow as the wallpaper and as golden as the glowing radiance advancing from behind the window curtains. The perfume in its vessel is yet another form of light within the painting.” – RICHARD STAMELMAN
Smelly birth
Painting is born in a smelly studio. – JIM ELKINS
Imagine multisensory design
“What if we designed for all our senses? Suppose, for a moment, that sound, touch, and odor were treated as the equals of sight, and that emotion was as important as cognition. What would our built environment be like if sensory response, sentiment, and memory were critical design factors, more vital even than structure and program?†– JOY MONICE MALNAR & FRANK VODVARKA Continue reading Imagine multisensory design
Smell matters
Smell is a quality not to be separated from matter. – IVAN VAN BLOCH
Idiosyncratic mnemo technique
“I switch perfumes all the time. If I’ve been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection…Odors are at once evocative and suggestive, redolent with significance.”
-Â ANDY WARHOL
Olfactory norm
“We live in a world of smells, where only the absence of smell is remarkable.” – R.W. MONCRIEFF