Kirjahaku

"Now Aftel has created this beautiful book, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent." — 7 x 7 "Aftel, ... explores the natural and cultural history of scent in her newest book, The Museum of Scent."— Veranda "A beautiful book about beautiful things, with a fascinating narrative told by an author who loves her subject."— Kirkus Reviews "It is so rich in story, information, and images, you don't just read it, you fall into it and don’t want it to end!" — Ivy Ross, co-author of New York Times bestseller Your Brain on Art and VP of Hardware Design at Google "...just leafing through Aftel’s stunning compilation of olfactory magic is like being gifted a book of secrets." — Smithsonian Breathe in the natural and cultural history of scent with this richly illustrated book inspired by the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents. “This work . . . is a true original - a rarest of rare legacy volume. This book was created by a beautiful elder who is a polymath: meaning, a highly unique person of multiple modern and old ways of knowing. . . . Mandy Aftel’s dons and talents are now resting in your hands in this magical tome that, I deeply sense and hope, will bless you time and again.” - From the foreword by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Reyés, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves and the forthcoming La Curandera, Walking in Two Worlds Mandy Aftel is one of the world’s preeminent natural perfumers, with a clientele ranging from the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen to Ivy Ross, head of hardware design at Google. Eschewing the synthetic molecules that dominate commercial perfumes, Aftel creates her complex and subtle fragrances using only natural essences. For her, each of these essences is a gateway to a lost world of scent, stretching back to the beginnings of human civilization and intertwined with the history of medicine, cuisine, adornment, sexuality, and spirituality. In 2017, 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 this beautiful book, 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.

Discover the esoteric insights and enchanting imagery of the Baroque emblem book, a long-lost cousin of the tarot. The emblem book, which reached the peak of its popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries, presented mysterious allegorical images—rather like those we now find on tarot cards—alongside Latin mottoes. A learned text explained the connection between image and motto, and the lessons each emblem held for the reader’s life. Drawing on sources such as medieval bestiaries and Aesop’s fables, emblem books reflected an enchanted view of nature in which our human lives were intertwined with plants, animals, the moon and the stars. World-renowned natural perfumer Mandy Aftel first encountered emblem books in the course of her researches into antique botanical illustrations, and quickly became entranced. Here she presents 100 emblems from perhaps the finest emblem book, the Symbolorum et Emblematum of Camerarius, originally published in four parts between 1590 and 1604. Aftel has sensitively tinted in watercolour the bewitching circular engravings of the Symbolorum, in which giant hands reach from the sky; lions, bears, and unicorns gambol; and distant spires beckon. The mottoes and explanatory texts are given in translation from the original Latin, along with Aftel’s own commentary. An illustrated introduction illuminates the history and magic of emblem book. Symbolorum will be a treasure for anyone who is drawn to uncover ancient wisdom and feel the breath of the universe.

Winner of the 2016 Perfumed Plume Award The "Alice Waters of American natural perfume" (indieperfume.com) celebrates our most potent sense, through five rock stars of the fragrant world. Look out for Mandy Aftel's new book, The Art of Flavor, on sale in August Mandy Aftel is widely acclaimed as a trailblazer in natural perfumery. Over two decades of sourcing the finest aromatic ingredients from all over the world and creating artisanal fragrances, she has been an evangelist for the transformative power of scent. In Fragrant, through five major players in the epic of aroma, she explores the profound connection between our sense of smell and the appetites that move us, give us pleasure, make us fully alive. Cinnamon, queen of the Spice Route, touches our hunger for the unknown, the exotic, the luxurious. Mint, homegrown the world over, speaks to our affinity for the familiar, the native, the authentic. Frankincense, an ancient incense ingredient, taps into our longing for transcendence, while ambergris embodies our unquenchable curiosity. And exquisite jasmine exemplifies our yearning for beauty, both evanescent and enduring. In addition to providing a riveting initiation into the history, natural history, and philosophy of scent, Fragrant imparts the essentials of scent literacy and includes recipes for easy-to-make fragrances and edible, drinkable, and useful concoctions that reveal the imaginative possibilities of creating with--and reveling in--aroma. Vintage line drawings make for a volume that will be a treasured gift as well as a great read.

A new set of high-quality scratch-and-sniff bookmarks from renowned perfumer Mandy Aftel—featuring alluring aromas from the cook’s kitchen. Rich with cultural and emotional associations of every kind, fragrances have the power to transport you to a different time and place—and none more than the scents of the kitchen. Following on the runaway success of her original Biblioscents, Mandy Aftel has created a new set of bookmarks scented with four natural essences to make the mouth water: blood orange, tarragon, pink pepper, and nutmeg. These culinary-themed bookmarks are the perfect way to keep your place in your favourite cookbook, or any book you want to truly savour.