Across 155 years of perfumery, Penhaligon’s has amassed its own vast taxonomy of fragrant,  memory-infused materials

Photography by Lydia WhitmoreSet design by Johanne Mills

Walter Benjamin once described the art of collecting as “the struggle against dispersion”. “Right from the start,” he continued, “the great collector is struck by the confusion, by the scatter in which the things of the world are found.” Benjamin, an avid collector of books, was writing in rebuke to the prevailing ideology of historicism, the notion that history flows chronologically across a fixed path. Instead, he advised we take an associative, astructural view of the past, one that recognises points of resonance and confluence between past and present eras. History was not a tidy string of beads on a rosary but rather a sprawling constellation to be drawn upon and explored. There is a lot of past in our present.

Over 300 years prior, in the wake of the Enlightenment and its renewed curiosity in acquiring knowledge, collectors had been reckoning with the scatter and diversity of the world with cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammer (“wonder rooms”). These spaces showcased objects and ephemera from across the globe, in grand displays or smaller, private collections. A precursor to the contemporary museum, the function of the Wunderkammer ostensibly reflected the period’s sense-making, order-imposing vision of the world. In practice, it posed as many questions about the mysteries of existence as it answered. A book of Enlightenment philosophy and a unicorn horn could sit alongside each other without the suggestion of incoherence. Wunderkammeren served to educate, but also invited the viewer to marvel at the breadth of the world and its mythological capacities.

Knowledge of the full sensorium was of top priority. As well as taxidermy animals and precious stones, sketches of Wunderkammeren from the 1600s show display shelves heaving with olfactory equipment: flacons brimming with scented liquids and alembics used for the distillation of materials. In Ole Worm’s Museum Wormianum, a guide to his own illustrious cabinet published in 1655, he catalogued his supplies of ambergris, musk and myrrh, whose aromas “lift the spirit and ward off pestilence”. This was a period in which the separation between alchemy and perfume was thinly demarcated: the pleasure of scent was inextricably linked to its remedial properties. (Contemporary science has validated some of these claims, with the scent of lavender linked to lower production of the stress hormone cortisol.)

We carry an enormous archive of smell memories in our brains, a personal Wunderkammer  that we return to every time we encounter a familiar scent

Even today, with the use of descriptive scent terminology, the olfactory realm remains something of an undiscovered continent, no less mysterious than it was in the era of the Wunderkammer. Unlike colours or sounds that have signs to describe specific sensory inputs, the names of scent compounds are obscure. The average person is unlikely to recognise ocimene, a linear terpene naturally occurring in mangoes, even if they might be familiar with it as the spearmint flavour in their gum. The layering of aromas complicates matters further: a 2019 study by the American Chemical Society identified over 600 compounds in the make-up of chocolate, with only a small fraction of them known to contribute to its scent. Mapping the human genome has been easier than identifying what it is we smell on a daily basis. In that same study, when test subjects were presented with familiar scents like peanut butter or coffee, they could only correctly identify their source 50% of the time. Were such limitations applied to sight, we would all be considered legally blind.

Why indexing scent remains such a mystery likely has a biological foundation. Smells are received by the olfactory receptors in the nose, which send signals to the olfactory bulb, then to the amygdala and hippocampus. Unlike all other senses, smell is not processed by the thalamus, the brain’s relay station, instead attaching itself directly to our memory centres without conscious processing. We carry an enormous archive of smell memories in our brains, a personal Wunderkammer that we return to every time we encounter a familiar scent.

When William Henry Penhaligon, a barber from Cornwall arrived in London in 1861, then the world’s largest and most bustling city, he was no doubt struck by its olfactory intensity.

Soot from nearby power stations, lime mixed with animal fat from local tanneries, the manure of thousands of horses: industrialisation was making its impact known through all the senses, but in scent form especially. Bathing had yet to become a daily ritual for most people, but an interest in Eastern culture led to the establishment of Turkish baths across the city. It was the hammam on 76 Jermyn Street, where Penhaligon was resident barber, that formed the inspiration for his first fragrance. The rose and lavender water used to scent the steam rooms found their way into Hammam Bouquet, released in 1872 (and later the signature scent of Maria Callas).

In comparison to the waxy, opulent scents of the French perfumery tradition, heavy with synthetic compounds, the British approach focused on natural botanicals to refresh the senses. When Penhaligon was succeeded by his son Walter, the budding businessman continued in his father’s legacy of reproducing quintessentially British scent memories. Blenheim Bouquet, released in 1902, was the essence of a British summer in a country garden with large glasses of gin and tonic; English Fern from 1910 was the brand’s first fougère, a classic barbershop scent. The brand would nod to its formula nearly a century later with 2003’s Endymion, which shares a lavender top-note and sandalwood base, and a similar gentlemanly sophistication. Across the ensuing century, with three royal warrants under its belt, the brand’s offerings came to encompass a full range of the fragrant elements of British, and increasingly, global life. Take Luna, as crisp, bright and clean as the Moon on a clear evening, or Halfeti, whose expert blend of cypress, Bulgarian rose and oud suggests the dusky majesty of its namesake Turkish village. More recently, the brand launched Cairo, an ode to Egypt’s rich cultural heritage and perfumery traditions, its juice rich with saffron and patchouli.

In the technological age, even the most fervent fabulist is unlikely to be convinced by a unicorn horn. While the process of demystification brought about by contemporary science has rendered once wondrous phenomena mundane, it has perhaps also made us less curious about the errant, obscure elements of earthly existence. Wunderkammeren now appear quaint, if not somewhat problematic. Yet there is wisdom in their philosophy, how they encourage us not simply to look, but to be transported, to question and to marvel at the ever-unfolding complexity of the world around us. Across its 155-year-history as a perfumer, Penhaligon’s has kept alive the notion of the scent as its own Wunderkammer, a kind of alchemy in which past, present and future coexist in a unified sensory experience. Through its craft, Penhaligon’s proves that there is still magic to be found in the diversity and mystery of existence. Inhale deeply, see what memories are conjured and let the wonder begin anew. 

Matteo Pini