“Craftsman, artist: I have never managed to settle for one or the other of these definitions for myself,” perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena wrote in The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur, published in English last January. “I feel like a craftsman when I am completely wrapped up in making a perfume; I feel like an artist when I imagine the perfume I need to make. In fact, I constantly juggle with the two standpoints. If perfume is first and foremost a creation of the mind, it cannot actually be created without the mastery of true skill.”

Diary of a Nose follows Ellena’s first book, Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent, a short volume on the fragrance industry released in English in 2009. As Marcello noted in his review of Alchemy of Scent in its original French edition, Le Perfum: Que-sais je? (2007), Ellena uses “some of his well-known creations to explain what he regards as the essence of his profession.” For those who have read industry basics before, the chapters on history, materials, classification, and marketing will be familiar, but told with more depth…

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