Smell & Tell: Sacred Scents Across Abrahamic Traditions

The ritual use of incense and perfumes is linked across Abrahamic traditions. You can literally smell it. Sacred scents occupy the space between liminality and the numinous, which is why describing a smell is challenging. Is it possible to break through this cloud of unknowing? The answer is yes and it requires an understanding of science, self and a sensorial leap of faith.

We can’t see smells. Even when we “see” the source of an aroma the lived experience of smelling is guided by emotion and memory. Western sensory hierarchy values vision over other senses so “seeing” gets in the way of understanding the essence of a thing. The antidote to this cultural bias is engaging “inner vision” and conquering implicit bias related to smell and culture.

Discover the olfactory tapestry of relational unity that weaves its way through Judaism, Christianity and Islam via sacred scents. Attendees will learn how to transcend the abstract nature of scent into articulated lived experience via Smell Mapping, a sensory evaluation technique inspired by professional perfumery training.

The scent flight for this program includes: Tibetan Deer Musk tinctured in vintage Mysore Sandalwood, Myrrh (Somalia), Frankincense (Oman), Laudate Chrism (United States), Greek Orthodox Jasmine Incense, Spikenard (Nepal), Bakhoor (Saudi Arabia), and Besamim (Judaic Spice Blend).

The Smell and Tell series of art+science programming is led by Michelle Krell Kydd, a trained nose in flavors and fragrance who shares her passion for gastronomy and the perfume arts on Glass Petal Smoke. Smell & Tell builds community through interactions with flavor, fragrance and storytelling. The unique and popular series celebrates its seventh anniversary year at the Ann Arbor District Library and is ongoing.

Smell & Tell: Sacred Scents Across Abrahamic Traditions
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2020
Time: 6:30-8:45PM
Location: The Ann Arbor District Library, Downtown Branch
Address: 343 South 5th Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone: 734-327-4200
Admission is free and is sponsored by AADL
Link to Event: https://aadl.org/node/398022

Notes:

The Sacred Scents Smell & Tell debuted at the University of Michigan on November 7, 2019. The inclusion of olfaction in an educational setting was a "first" for some students and faculty in attendance, which led to lively discussions during and after the program.

Sacred Scents raised awareness of the value of the sense of smell in relationship to anthropology, diversity, history and religion. It was designed to support Remapping Peoples of the Book: Theorizing Abrahamic Vernaculars, an Mcube at the University of Michigan.

Mcubed is housed in the University of Michigan Office of Research, as part of the president and provost’s Third Century Initiative. It is a seed funding program that stimulates and supports innovative research.

Smell & Tell: Helen Keller’s Smelling Session with Perfumer Michel Pasquier

Helen Keller participated in a smelling session with a perfumer in the fall of 1950. The event was described in an article titled “The World Through Three Senses” that Keller wrote for the March 1951 edition of Ladies’ Home Journal. The name of the perfumer was conspicuously absent, which was odd considering the postwar boom in women’s perfumes and the fact that Keller was an avid gardener who adored flowers.

It turns out that Helen Keller didn’t leave the perfumer’s name out of the article— the editor did. Michelle Krell Kydd discovered this after the American Foundation for the Blind launched the first fully accessible digital archive of The Helen Keller Collection in June 2019. The draft of “The World Through Three Senses” wasn’t hidden behind a paywall; it was hidden in plain sight. The perfumer’s name was Michel Pasquier.

Msr. Pasquier was an independent perfumer who compounded fragrances in his lab at 7 West 46th Street in New York City. Keller joined a small group of women in Westport, Connecticut who met with the perfumer and evaluated eight unidentified perfumes, each inspired by a single flower. The women used Pasquier’s “whiff sachets” during the exercise, and tried to guess the name of flower that inspired each perfume.

We’ll recreate the smelling session experienced by Helen Keller using single floral notes supplied by International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF). We’ll also smell Pasquier’s Tobruk perfume (1952) and see a vintage Pasquier gift set that includes the whiff sachets that Helen Keller referenced in “The World Through Three Senses”. Join us for several historic “firsts” at this Smell & Tell.

The Smell and Tell series of art+science programming is led by Michelle Krell Kydd, a trained nose in flavors and fragrance who shares her passion for gastronomy and the perfume arts on Glass Petal Smoke. Smell & Tell builds community through interactions with flavor, fragrance and storytelling. The unique and popular series celebrates its seventh anniversary year at the Ann Arbor District Library and is ongoing.

Smell & Tell: Helen Keller's Smelling Session with Perfumer Michel Pasquier
Date: Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Time: 6:30-8:45PM
Location: The Ann Arbor District Library, Pittsfield Branch
Address: 2359 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor, M 48103
Phone: 734-327-4200
Admission is free and is sponsored by AADL
Link to Event: https://aadl.org/node/397484

Note:
Helen Keller communicated the value of the sense of smell throughout her lifetime. This is thoughtfully developed in an essay titled “Smell, The Fallen Angel”, which appears in the sixth chapter of her book, The World I Live In (1904). Keller felt that smell was a noble sense “neglected and disparaged” in ocularcentric culture. It still is.

Smell & Tell: The Smell of Mummies

The Smell of Mummies takes place at the Ann Arbor District Library
on Thursday, November 14, 2019, from 6:30-8:45PM. 

Several ingredients used in the ancient Egyptian ritual of mummification can also be found in today's luxury perfumes. Sound gruesome? Take heart. This isn’t fodder for conspiracy theories, but it’s definitely inspiration for the inevitable question. If aromatic materials used in perfumery were also used to send mummies into the afterlife what on earth do mummies smell like?

Are you imagining the smells of a dead body in the process of mummification when considering this question? Stop those thoughts immediately and put on your Sherlock Holmes hat! We’re in it for the science at Smell & Tell so Michelle Krell Kydd went to the Kelsey Museum of Archeology at the University of Michigan to smell mummies. Sounds strange, alluring and slightly macabre, but when the “Nose of Ann Arbor” needs answers she literally sniffs them out.

Kydd took her fearless nose to the basement of the Kelsey Museum and was escorted to a temperature-controlled room where she encountered a mummified a falcon, a mummified dog (that was really a fake mummy made from jumbled children’s bones), and a human mummy. At the end of her quest she was overheard telling a Kelsey Museum staff member, “Damn the mummy powder drinkers and the Victorians with their lust for the aromatic dead.”

When the Ann Arbor District Library asked Kydd about the smell of mummies she had this to say, “Mummies don’t smell like decomposition, but they don’t smell like Chanel N°5 either.” We’ll smell beautiful natural extracts used in mummification that are also used in modern luxury perfumes at this Smell & Tell program. Simulacra of Mummy a perfume inspired by the smell of mummies at the Kelsey Museum, will also be experienced.

The scent flight for The Smell of Mummies includes: N° 1: Lotus of Nefertem, N° 2: Hatshepsut at Punt, N° 3: Mut’s Kyphi, N° 4: Egyptian Jasmine, N° 5: The Embalmer’s Jar, N° 6: Simulacra of Mummy, N° 7: Victorian Sham, and N° 8: Allamistakeo’s Cigar. If you don't know who Allamistakeo is and consider yourself an Edgar Allan Poe fan, visit the Poe Museum website and learn about Some Words with a Mummy. Warning: What you learn may alter romantic notions of Victorian culture, should you harbor them.

The Smell and Tell series of art+science programming is led by Michelle Krell Kydd, a trained nose in flavors and fragrance who shares her passion for gastronomy and the perfume arts on Glass Petal Smoke. Smell & Tell builds community through interactions with flavor, fragrance and storytelling. The Smell and Tell series celebrates it's seventh anniversary year at the Ann Arbor District Library and is ongoing.

Notes:
Smell & Tell events are listed on the right hand page of Glass Petal Smoke and removed after an event takes place. Complete information for specific public programs, like The Smell of Mummies, will be posted in the blog for reference over time.

The body of work for Smell & Tell programming, which began in 2012, reaches the 100th program mark at the University of Michigan with the introduction of Sacred Scents, an exploration of religiously significant scents from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the three Abrahamic traditions. The event, which is designed for University of Michigan Students, debuts on November 7, 2019.

Smell & Tell: The Smell of Mummies
Date: Thursday, November 14, 2019
Time: 6:30-8:45PM (early arrival recommended)
Location: Ann Arbor District Library (Downtown Branch)
Address: 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
Phone: 734-327-4200
Admission: Free as Smell & Tell is sponsored by AADL
Link to Event: https://aadl.org/node/397485

Perfumes of Place: Wunderkammer Tincture №.9

Vanilla Orchids

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the Ann Arbor Distilling Company was the woody aroma of vanilla. It perfumed the July air with the efflorescent lilt of linden blossoms on breeze-borne sillage. The nose was quicker than the eye when it came to locating the source. It was the aroma of spirits maturing inside oak barrels at the distillery and it smelled like perfume.

The curiosity spark. Ann Arbor Distilling Co. Fall Gin in barrel nine.

Curiouser and curiouser. Look closely at the dark amber trail on the lower right hand corner of the oak cask. What you see smells amazing and that’s because of what it is; oak sugars and aromatics that have dried down after the spirit weeps, leaving a sticky brown sap behind. It’s proof of the barrel’s exhalations, an oak barrel used to age bourbon in a previous life.

The aromatic trail isn’t unusual or a sign of an irreparable leak in the cask, especially during hot summer months. Wood is a natural material that breathes. The angels get their share when alcohol evaporates through the wood and then, at times, a caramelized oaky resin is left behind when a bit of spirit escapes. It’s like finding a feather from an angel’s wing. The invisible is manifest, but it's sensed before the redolence is seen.

Charred oak stave from a bourbon barrel

John Britton, chief distiller at the Ann Arbor Distilling Company, has a funny name for the fragrant sweet resin, which in distiller’s parlance is called a barrel booger. I have another name for it; Wunderkammer Tincture № 9. It's named after the gin-filled oak cask that prompted a collection of various resins from the distillery's barrels at my request.

After 24 hours of maceration Wunderkammer Tincture №. 9 is begging to make friends with linden blossom, patchouli and oakmoss. And so it goes. Wunderkammer Tincture №. 9 sits next to Zoltan’s Equine Horse Chestnut Tincture, another essence that’s part of my Smell Memories of Ann Arbor collection. Not quite a wunderkammer—yet. A perfume accord is incubating. So is the idea of olfactory representations of place with respect to Ann Arbor, Michigan, the place I've called home since I left New York eight years ago.

Cured bourbon vanilla beans by Ann@74 via Flickr

I consider the fact that Andy Warhol wished for "some kind of smell museum" when he was alive and that his wish never came true. He just collected things. I look at Wunderkammer Tincture №. 9 and promise myself that I’ll replace wishing with doing. Encoffining a growing collection of smell memories is not an option. It's time to bring them into the light.

Notes:
You can smell Wunderkammer Tincture №. 9 at a gin-themed Taste & Tell Program I’m giving on September 18th at the Ann Arbor Distilling Company. The free event is sponsored by the Ann Arbor District Library for adults 21+.  An optional gin tasting flight can be purchased for a nominal fee for those wishing to imbibe as they learn about local artisanal gin.

Classic chypre fragrance fans who love gin take note; one of the autumnal flavors in Ann Arbor Distilling Company Fall Gin is oakmoss. It's the ingredient you're used to smelling on your wrist after a spritz of vintage Mitsouko by Guerlain. Eau yes. No elegy for oakmoss or hack chypre perfumes by faux niche brands that would make a nun hurl expletives.

Kevin Curtis at Angel's Envy calls bourbon barrel exudate "barrel candy". It smells better than it tastes, but that doesn't stop Curtis from punking innocents who visit the whiskey house. The exudate tastes like "licking an ashtray" according to Curtis. That's because a smoky dose of 4-methyl guaiacol is doing way too much talking on the palate.