Perfumery lab - olfactory art gallery
Grasse, France
avec Laurence Fanuel
It is in the laboratory of L'Atelier de Rosa Rose in Grasse that the crucial stage of the project takes place: the search for materials and their interaction with the perfumed ingredients of the installation OAP.
Grasse is known as the city of perfumes and in the streets, everything leads to intoxication. There, in its belly, a room in the basement, from which one can see the feet of passers-by running in the alley above, there is the lab. In the centre, an island filled with books, boxes and drawers, on the left, a sink overhung by shelves and on the right, countless vials fill the space, ultra-precise weighing scales, waxes, solutions. Small LED spotlights illuminate the pink atmosphere of the lab. Warm light to feel good, cold light also for the precision of the gesture. It is cooler than elsewhere and when you go downstairs, the smells mix, then as soon as you find a bottle within reach, you bring it to your nose with curiosity and gluttony until your senses are saturated!
© Caroline Bouissou
"My laboratory is a real space of research and creation mixed together. The centrepiece is above all: the perfume organ and all its flasks, its vials filled with essences and molecules. Each container is a note in the organ, a fragrance destined to be mixed with others. More than 800 ingredients are waiting here to find their place in a new formula, a unique inspiration, a scented breath. This is where perfumes are created. "
© Caroline Bouissou
"In this laboratory, multiple and varied projects rub shoulders, between art and science. As an inhabitant of the place, my nose doesn't pay much attention to the ambient olfactory hubbub. It is when a smell lingers, floating in the air, that it catches my attention. It will be, for example, the smell of the fridge, an indescribable mixture of the most powerful and repulsive smells, especially if the jar of pyrazines has been opened, reminiscent of the smell of cooked rice, or that of the last perfume we weighed, especially if it is laden with dry amber woody notes, mixed with all the smells of the projects in progress. Thus, we will find, slyly hovering in its corner, the pungent smell of cigarette butts just scientifically reproduced, with a "heavy taste" of cold ash and old Chips mixed together, but also "the smelly witch" just out of her mouldy cupboard for the olfactory tale of the Shooting and the Lyre, or a nice leathery note coming from the most beautiful know-how of the historical perfumery (one has to do one's homework and to study the ways of the elders - respect!). The smell of the lab changes according to the inspirations and the breaths, that's how the perfumery lab lives, and in the middle, without judging the good or the bad, I look for the smell that will enter in olfactory resonance with the project in progress. It is then that I go up to the ground floor, where in the workshop's sales area, I test the latest fragrance in order to get it out of the magma and evaluate it in a virgin air. The scent takes over the space, alone this time, it's a fairly natural, green, aromatic and woody fragrance, which I try to capture the landscape it draws for my clients."
© Caroline Bouissou
The perfumer's laboratory with her organ is made up of shelves on which are arranged a series of bottles, flasks and containers filled with essences and odours. This is where perfumes are made.
© Caroline Bouissou
Mise en place d"un protocole de recherche
testant les supports associés aux couvertes et aux mélanges olfactifs