The Museum of Scent: Exploring the Curious and Wondrous World of Fragrance

In 2017, award-winning natural perfumer and author Mandy Aftel opened a one-room museum―the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents―in her backyard in Berkeley, California, to help a modern audience rediscover the enchantment of this lost world. Her museum has attracted thousands of enthusiastic visitors and has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Goop, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other media outlets. Now Aftel has created The Museum of Scent, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent. She guides us through the different families of botanical fragrances (including flowers, woods, leaves and grasses, and resins), depicting each plant with a hand-colored antique woodcut and revealing its olfactory notes and lore. Special chapters are devoted to the most rare and precious fragrances―such as ambergris, formed of a rare secretion of the sperm whale―and to antique essential oil bottles, handwritten recipe books, and other evocative artifacts. The Museum of Scent, which includes a bookmark subtly scented with a natural essence, invites us on a sensuous, imaginative journey. In celebration of Aftel’s new book, MOFAD is thrilled to welcome Mandy Aftel and culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris for a virtual conversation about the natural and cultural history of scent and its important role in the world of food and drink.