This workshop will explore the significance of smell in the formation and breakdown of romantic relationships. It will involve short talks by the project’s Principal Investigator Dr Sally Holloway, and Dr William Tullett, Lecturer at the University of York and expert in the history of smell and the senses. Participants will take part in a creative workshop making scented collages led by the award-winning visual artists Jill Mueller and Julie Light, who create award-winning pieces on health, the body, identity, and what it means to be human.

What is the sweet scent of romantic love? For Anne Elliot, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the joy of love was ‘almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way’. For the Victorian poet George Meredith, love was the sweet scent of the briar and the juice of ripe apples in the orchard. Losing a romantic partner is no less of a sensory experience, distinguished by a similarly pungent mix of aromas. In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Miss Havisham’s house is characterised by ‘an airless smell’, with ‘every discernible thing in it…covered with dust and mould’. Perfumers have variously suggested that heartbreak smells like patchouli (dark and violent), liquorice (bitter, with a tinge of sweetness) or with the rituals used in processing loss (cigarette smoke). As any of us who have endured the end of an intimate relationship will know, smell can be singularly powerful in vividly resurrecting old memories and emotions.

Join us in the beautiful community garden at Barracks Lane in east Oxford, where participants will be able to use the tranquil garden for inspiration and share pizzas made on-site using the garden’s pizza oven.