Craft of Olfaction
Ittar of Kannauj
Craft of Olfaction explores the non-tactile, non visual nature of creating smells. What makes it different is that it caters to a sense that is more often than not excluded from designing for the senses. The main guiding receptors of this process are not visual or tactile, but olfaction.
+ Inquiry I Research & Documentation I Ethnography
+ Guided by Swasti Singh Ghai
+ 8 Weeks
Dive Directly
Check out how smell and nostalgia come together in this short film.
Garlands, jewellery, clothes are 'external' ornamentations for the human body while others like clean teeth and trimmed nails are 'internal' ornamentations of the body.
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Fragrances, are internal-external ornamentations because they are applied to the physiology (body)
and affect the psychology ( mind and experience).
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- James McHugh
In his book, Sandalwood and Carrion
Inquiry
What makes perfumery a craft ?
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The non-tactile, non-visual nature of this craft is what makes it different. It caters to a sense that is more often than not excluded from designing for the senses. The main guiding receptors of this process are not visual or tactile, but olfaction.
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Perfumery is a craft, owing to the outcome of skill and process carried out by a craftsperson, ie., the perfumer.
The craftsperson's own senses and olfactory aesthetic guides the process of perfume making. What qualifies it as a craft is the engagement of the craftsperson from the beginning till the end of the entire process.
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How might we connect craft, people and culture ?
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Crafts are intrinsic to cultures all across the world and are an important sphere of socio-economic activities. Craft extends out of one's psychological needs to create and express. This inquiry documents craftspeople of ittar perfumery as critical role players of designing fragrances.
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This document streamlines its vision from macro lens of perfumery to a more
specific lens of the role of this craft in the Indian context as well as its affect in India.
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Why Study Smell and Fragrance?
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With an aim document the evolution of ittar making as a craft practice as well as it's rising or declining importance, I intent to understand how we can bring in the marginalised into mainstream design practices.
Studying olfaction and exploring areas of synesthesia can lead to interesting developments in the untapped area of designing of smells and experiences.
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My Role
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My intention in studying the craft and the craftsperson egan while talking to my father about our state's crafts. Before that, I knew litle about this ancient practice of perfume making concentrated in the city of Kannauj.
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The key area of interest is to understand a technique, a process, a maker that revolves around the creation of the unseen and untouched, something that can only be smelled.
Research Tools
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Tools and methodology form an important part of research and it's analysis.