Tatami
Note Profile
About
Tatami is the smell of a Japanese rush-grass mat: dry sun-baked straw with a green herbaceous edge, sitting under temple incense. It is a fantasy accord, not an extract. Nothing is distilled from a mat.
Scent Profile
Tatami smells of dry, sun-baked straw, the spine of the note, with a green, herbaceous edge from the rush grass itself. A faint cooked-potato note can show at first. Temple incense sits over the straw, part smoky and part resinous depending on the build. A light, woody note runs alongside it, and an earthy, grounded quality sits underneath. A faint caramel and vanilla sweetness lingers, kept well back so the note never turns sugary.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Materials That Can Make This Note
Perfumers can build Tatami from materials such as:
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Vanillin vanilla · creamy · chocolate
Smell words come from published sources.
Allergens perfumes with this note can list: 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
A tatami mat is woven from igusa rush (Juncus effusus var. decipiens) grown mainly around Yatsushiro in Kumamoto, over a rice-straw core. Drying the rush creates most of its smell. Nothing is extracted from the mat, so perfumers build the accord from other materials. One build uses cypriol oil and hay absolute over vetiver, balsams and a touch of castoreum. Another uses a cypress treated the way tatami is, with incense. Hay absolute and coumarin give the closest natural approach.
Usage in Perfumery
A heart-to-base accord for Japanese interior themes: temple, tearoom, sunlit floor. It gives a dry straw floor that reads calm rather than rustic, and it takes incense well because both builds already put incense or balsam under it. Reach for it where hay is too sweet and reed too green.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Tatami
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Tatami appears prominently.
No perfumes featuring this note have been reviewed yet. Check back soon.