Archivi tag: botanical perfumery

Materia Viva in English

Materia Viva, the Aromatic Ezine n.2 – Melissa officinalis

Materia Viva is a work in progress dedicated to aromatic raw materials: resins, plants, woods, essences, balsams, flowers, seeds, roots.

It arises where scent, word, image, and research meet. Of each material, what matters is not only its effect, but everything that accompanies it: where it comes from, which landscape generates it, which hands have gathered it, how it has become a symbol.

It is at once a cultural notebook and a sensory experience. Each material is traced back to its origin, through lands and customs, ancient trade routes, archives, faces, and sudden intuitions. Starting from a resin, a wood, a flower, the thread is followed: clues are gathered, the scent is listened to, an image is pursued, until a form surfaces.

Part of this work lives in texts and digital publications; another part becomes original artwork, printed in fine art.

One issue of Materia Viva is dedicated to Melissa (Melissa officinalis). Here is an excerpt:

The diaphragm opens — the breath catches a citrine brightness. The citrus note spreads over a movement that has already happened in the body — the breath returns to where perhaps a silence had been held. Melissa welcomes with its fragrance, carrying with it a story intimately bound to sweetness and bees. Its name is Greek and means bee. It is perhaps in the figure of the hidden nurse, keeper of a sweetness that does not proclaim itself, that Melissa officinalis still finds today its most ancient gesture: to gladden the heart, to tend the breath, to scent the hive so that the swarm chooses to stay.

You can receive a free PDF copy by writing to us via the WhatsApp button on the site. Read more about Materia Viva, or continue to the next issue : Sumatra Benzoin.

Materia Viva in English

Materia Viva, the Aromatic Ezine – Giant Sequoia, the First Issue

Materia Viva is a work in progress dedicated to aromatic raw materials: resins, plants, woods, essences, balsams, flowers, seeds, roots.

It arises where scent, word, image, and research meet. Of each material, what matters is not only its effect, but everything that accompanies it: where it comes from, which landscape generates it, which hands have gathered it, how it has become a symbol.

It is at once a cultural notebook and a sensory experience. Each material is traced back to its origin, through lands and customs, ancient trade routes, archives, faces, and sudden intuitions. Starting from a resin, a wood, a flower, the thread is followed: clues are gathered, the scent is listened to, an image is pursued, until a form surfaces.

Part of this work lives in texts and digital publications; another part becomes original artwork, printed in fine art.

The first issue is dedicated to Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Here is an excerpt:

There is a particular sense of wonder in opening a bottle of Giant Sequoia essential oil. The scent is resinous, woody, penetrating — from a tree that can rise beyond a hundred metres and live for three thousand years, an essence is drawn that concentrates this vastness, as if time itself became portable. The time of the Sequoia is not the time of the diary. It is the time in which bark thickens layer upon layer, in which roots intertwine with other roots, in which resistance accumulates without haste.

You can receive a free PDF copy by writing to us via the WhatsApp button on the site. Read more about Materia Viva, or continue to the next issue – Melissa.