Clay Face
Honolulu, Hawaii
Viola di bosco (Mystic Water) violets and wood
Of the 750 soaps and creams listed in Maggard’s inventory, only one, a Trumper cream, is scented with violet. This would astonish anyone living a century ago, when violet was the most popular posy in the whole bouquet of masculine grooming products. The discovery of ionones in the 1890s made the dry, sweet scent of woodland violets remarkably cheap. Perfumers dumped it into all sorts of creams and confections. It remained conspicuous on the front shelf until the 1930s, when the world grew tired of the odd way ionones have of dematerializing before your nose. These molecules blind your scent receptors so that their fragrance vanishes after a few sniffs, only to reappear when your receptors clear. To some it’s a troubling experience that comes across as a sort of olfactory strobe light. For decades the popularity of violet has been on the wane. Now I happen upon violet only when I lather a puck of Viola di bosco, or pop one of Choward’s purple mints into my mouth. It’s an old-fashioned scent, a Victorian floral that sets you at the counter of an antique apothecary. Many thanks to Mystic Water for keeping it in our repertoire.
For more on how your nose makes sense of smells, turn to Luca Turin’s The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell. New York: Ecco, 2006.
Of the 750 soaps and creams listed in Maggard’s inventory, only one, a Trumper cream, is scented with violet. This would astonish anyone living a century ago, when violet was the most popular posy in the whole bouquet of masculine grooming products. The discovery of ionones in the 1890s made the dry, sweet scent of woodland violets remarkably cheap. Perfumers dumped it into all sorts of creams and confections. It remained conspicuous on the front shelf until the 1930s, when the world grew tired of the odd way ionones have of dematerializing before your nose. These molecules blind your scent receptors so that their fragrance vanishes after a few sniffs, only to reappear when your receptors clear. To some it’s a troubling experience that comes across as a sort of olfactory strobe light. For decades the popularity of violet has been on the wane. Now I happen upon violet only when I lather a puck of Viola di bosco, or pop one of Choward’s purple mints into my mouth. It’s an old-fashioned scent, a Victorian floral that sets you at the counter of an antique apothecary. Many thanks to Mystic Water for keeping it in our repertoire.
For more on how your nose makes sense of smells, turn to Luca Turin’s The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell. New York: Ecco, 2006.
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