Long ago, I had given a virtual curatorial tour of Bagh-e Hind to Catherine Liu, author of Virtue Hoarders. As we came towards the end of our leisurely conversations on smell-references, she described a memory — the smell of a hotel room in China in the late 1980s, smoke trapped in furnishing and thick wool carpets…
Overseas Chinese Hotel, Canton 1980, Apparently the only place foreigners could stay. Image attribution: unknown
Last week, I suddenly remembered this description and emailed Catherine for more details. She elaborated:
“If you have any really dusty Chinese wool carpets around, try sniffing them: it is a combination of dust, smoke and wool. These carpets have a thick pile and I don't think they were vacuumed, only beaten by hand in the yard and because they weighed so much, it was hard to get all the dust out.
“Soviet Era Chinese Hotel Room” — the smoke is of course cigarette smoke, but Beijing was also burning coal for heat, so that mixed with cigarette smoke. There was also the scent of Green tea (Long jing or Dragon’s Well).”
PS: Catherine has written about this time period in her novel “Oriental Girls Desire Romance”, published in 1997.
I had been to Beijing and Shanghai in September 2008 as part of my study group tour with Sotheby’s Institute but by then, China had cleaned up its air in preparation for the Olympics. So my reference point for the cigarette smoke filled environment was the Addis Ababa airport lounge. Through the 1980s, we used to travel with Ethiopian Airlines from Lagos to Bombay and back. Remembering that smell can still induce a headache but as I child I paid more attention to how beautiful Addis Ababa was, so different from Nigeria, with an actual winter season and so many different flowers!
I’ll remind readers for context that I am a self taught perfumer with no interest in math and chemistry. When I pivoted from writing about art to making perfume in 2018, I did not have the luxury (money! I mean money), to take a course in France. Instead I leveraged my two very-expensive-no-good art degrees to establish the same principles for this intangible aesthetic construction. The medium is different but the foundations stand on the same mode of inquiry: What is the artist saying, how are they saying it, and why?
I told Catherine I could make this perfume in five minutes, no big deal. To me, perfumery is not complicated or difficult or time consuming. If the small number of natural materials at my disposal are reliably good, then the result is always excellent. Plenty can be done with little and this is my specialty! I consider Perfumery as not abstract, but a highly logical field. I don’t fuss or second guess myself, the first draft of formulation is usually the final that still leaves room for a few tweaks. My aim is not to seek perfection, rather my purpose is to capture an approximate sense.
I certainly wanted to avoid the stuffy Babushka vibe and go for maximal textured opulence. My first job after I got my degree in art from Central St. Martins in London in 2002, was as a carpet designer for the largest manufacturer in West Africa in Lagos. I can tell you, carpets these days are neither made of wool, nor are they high-pile and plush. They’re made from a plastic polymer — they melt like plastic too so these products were marketed to consumers as “Flame Retardant Carpets and Rugs”. The CEO of this conglomerate of companies, an upper caste Brahmin Tamil from America, the most max-horrible-obnoxious type of “American” from New Jersey, waxed lyrical about his slick marketing tactics, while simultaneously bragging to his sycophants about recently purchasing a $5000 silk-wool rug from Kashmir. I want to emphasise here, that the elites will always shortchange you. You, the public, you don’t need fine things in life. You don’t deserve it. You don’t even have the education to be discerning of luxury.
This is a subject-feeling Catherine’s book helped me untangle early in 2023. Before I read Virtue Hoarders, I think I spent the whole of 2022 crying. I was so angry and confused. Now I’m angry and wise. We are being robbed blind on every front by crypto-corporate-fascists — the quality of air, water, the erasure of gardens and the future of flowers… These people will lay their Kashmiri rugs in a nuclear bunker in New Zealand. Once their food and water runs out, they will emerge to the surface. And we, the nuclear survivor-mutants, will see them as plump enough to eat!
Wait! What was I saying?! —So the carpets Catherine described were “thick and plush wool”, hence the perfume ought to reflect this luxuriousness. This sensation can only be created by the best natural materials, while their shine, can be amplified by quality synthetics.
For the effect of furnishing textiles, wool and carpet there is Cashmeran and Galaxolide, synthetic Civet and Castoreum musks, as well as some botanical musks like Himalayan Ambrette seed oil.
For the effect of dust and cigarettes, Costus extract, Haitian Vetiver and Tobacco Absolute.
For leather and woods, Suederal (manufactured by IFF), Ambergris, Agarwood, Buddhawood and Cedarwood.
For burning coal, Choya Nakh, a black tar-like resin produced by the distillation of seashells in Kannauj (India). It smells like…gasoline with a hint of iodine. I am not even sure how or why this has came to be produced over the last couple of centuries.
A glimpse of the materials:
Pictured is a tester strip dipped in undiluted Tobacco Absolute/Nicotiana Tabacum (Bulgaria). It smells like dried dates and raisins, so this is what I will use to make a “dried fig and fungi” accord for another perfume. A material on my wish list is Tobacco flower absolute, but even at 5 grams, it is too expensive.
I have green tea and black tea CO2 extracts, but I exercised some restraint and only used the green tea to keep things simple yet elegant.
As readers can see, the two vetivers, from India and Haiti are different in appearance. The one produced in India is green because the oil is traditionally distilled and stored in copper vessels. The same oil when shifted to an aluminium bottle will turn brown over time.
Perhaps due to differences in soil and climate, the Haitian vetiver smells marine-salty and smokey. In contrast, the Indian variety always smells wet-earth-sweet and like ground nuts.
The “Soviet Smoke” perfume came along fine but when I looked up Dragon’s Well tea, there was a question of authentic and inauthentic “Longjing tea”. Authentically roasted Longjing tea, according to Wikipedia (sorry!), tastes sweet, mellow and rounded. “Some varieties are distinctly vegetal and grassy, and others carry a hint of roasted chestnut and butter.”
Violet leaf and Green tea extracts were the crucial base to build on. Pictured above is a tester strip dipped in undiluted Violet Leaf Absolute. It smells like crushed cucumber peels with accentuated watery notes. Clary Sage Absolute, another green element and petitgrain oil, added a grassy-herbal-citrus note. The roasted-chestnut-butter note came from Orris. Lastly, one drop of Jasmine Grandiflorum, supplanted by Oakmoss and Cis Jasmone musk truly made this blend worthy of an Emperor.
This tea-accord turned out so sparklingly beautiful, I decided it ought to be experienced separately, and appreciated on its own. Catherine could also have some control over the two facets — she could choose to either expand the thick dark clouds of burning smoke or brighten up her “hotel room” with a refreshing “cup” of Longjing cha!
The final perfumes were paired with a special blend of Monsoon Malabar Coffee that my boutique trader recommended as it produces the “closest sensation to a smoked cigar”. I put this label in my FedEx parcel for Catherine but I got scolded by my freight forwarder: “MADAM, DON’T PUT TITLES THAT ARE PROHIBITED BY THE USA”!
I’m happy to say that the perfumes more than met Catherine’s memory and expectations and she has kindly given me permission to offer up the leftover perfume in my stock for sale. This perfume is not listed on my website because I made such a small quantity but Subscribers can acquire the set of two 3ml perfumes (tea & smoke) and coffee for $210, that includes FedEx. I regret that I have to put a decoy label on the coffee to satisfy my shipper’s stringent requirements.
Hit reply to order this synesthesia set and a paypal link will be sent to you.
You too can book a virtual curatorial tour with me and bring a guest! Last weekend I updated and revived my Bagh Gift Shop that has been dead since 2022!
Wowowow