The smallest coffee-table book in my collection is Nigel Groom's Perfume Companion. It has the shape and size of a travel guide, which makes it a handy companion indeed: you can bring it along to the dentist, the hair salon, the nail studio, or the gym. But let's assume you have no intention to do that. What other advantages does a compact guide like The Perfume Companion have over ordinary coffee-table books? To answer that question, let's see what this “Connoisseur's Guide” has to offer.

The Perfume Companion consists of two parts. Part one is essentially a quick guide to perfumery, featuring a brief historical overview of the industry…

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I often wondered if people on perfume boards had anything else in common beside their love of fragrances. After years of collecting data, comparing statistics, and plotting ingenious 3-D graphs, I finally found the answer: perfume addicts are avid readers. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, true perfume lovers seem to read day and night. I know many of them pay frequent visits to NST as well, which is why I decided to revive the old “Building a fragrance library”-concept. Last December we made a list of five “must-have” books for beginners, ranging from Süskind’s Perfume to Burr’s The Emperor of Scent. This time, the focus is on reference books.

Let’s start with a title closely related to the subject of perfumery: The Chemistry of Fragrances, compiled by David Pybus and Charles Sell. I have to admit I don’t own this one (yet), but I was fortunate enough to browse through it very recently. It covers all aspects involved in perfumery, giving wonderful insights into the stuff that modern fragrances are made of, and how they are marketed. As has been said many times before, chemistry plays an essential role in the art of perfumery; this book makes it clear that science and creativity go hand in hand…

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