Old Books

Note Profile

Prepared 9 perfumes

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About

Old Books is the smell of ageing paper. One primary source puts it in a sentence: grassy notes, a tang of acids, a hint of vanilla, over an underlying mustiness. All four come from paper breaking down, not from anything added. The vanilla is vanillin released as lignin in wood-pulp paper degrades, which is why cheap twentieth-century paper smells sweeter than rag paper.

Scent Profile

Old Books smells grassy and green first, over a musty, earthy base that holds the whole thing up. A dry, woody character comes through, like pulped and pressed paper. A sour, acid tang cuts across it, with a faint hint of sweet vanilla and a dry, powdery dust filling the gaps.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~10h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Woody & Earthy, Fruity, Sweet & Gourmand

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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ScentArt

What is ScentArt?

Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Old Books from materials such as:

Furfural almond · caramellic · caramelic

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Bitter almond, Vanillin

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

Origin

Not a material and not an extract. It is the headspace of degrading paper, measured by Strlic and colleagues in 2009 by GC-MS on historic book samples. They identified several hundred volatile and semi-volatile compounds off-gassing from the paper and the object as a whole. Named contributors include benzaldehyde for almond, vanillin for vanilla, ethylbenzene and toluene for a general sweetness, and 2-ethylhexanol for a slight floral lift. Perfumery rebuilds it as a composed accord.

Usage in Perfumery

A niche and candle accord, used to give a fragrance a setting rather than a smell: a library, an archive, a study. It is usually built with paper, dust and dry wood materials, then sweetened with a small vanillic dose so it does not read as pure mould. It works under leather and tobacco in a study accord, and it needs a dry base or the mustiness turns sour.