The Scent of A Book

The What does a book smell like? Its the kind of question that raises more questions.

Karl Lagerfeld just launched a new perfume with Wallpaper and Steidl inspired by the scent of paper. 

 

“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.” Karl Lagerfeld said about the scent. 

A perfume blogger I read, Octavian Coifan, posted about the new scent at his 1000 fragrances. Coifan said that to really smell a book you need to go to an old library. 

"The scent is for the booklover the key to an unknown world. Paper from different historic periods, book

covers made of leather, the ink once scented, the dust or sand of time, the wooden shelves, the decay and

moisture,  and even the perfumes of those characters when they become real during the night."

In the  XIXth century French binders used  Russian leather and added perfumes to the  inks to protect the

book from  insects.

In the XVIIIth century love letters were scented.  

Chinese inks and the huge imperial seals imparted scents from the  cinnamon or sandalwood boxes they were kept in.

"Paper has a love affair with resins  - it's a tiny woody membrane transformed through a process. An old book

with thick paper is like a collection of uncut scent strips. This scent is not the phisycal drop from a crystal

bottle, but the scent of words because metaphors are to a book what a perfume is to a plant - its soul."

To read his whole post click here.