Think Human 2024: Scents of Love and Loss
Our event on the scents of love and loss took place in the beautiful tranquil space of Barracks Lane Community Garden on 20 April, in partnership with the mental health charity Oxfordshire Mind, as part of Oxford Brookes’ biennial Think Human Festival of the Humanities and Social Sciences. During a sunny afternoon, we explored the various intersections between love, heartbreak, and smell, considering the questions: what does love smell like? What is the scent of heartbreak? How have these varied over time? What are our own personal responses to particular smells? How do they work to conjure particular feelings for us, and help to stir memories of current and past relationships?
We opened by sharing some of the scents which evoked lost loved ones for us, which ranged from lavender to tinned salmon, wood fires, cigars, cigarette smoke, aftershave, perfume, hospitals, and hot concrete.
The event began with interactive "scented” talks by the project’s Principal Investigator Dr Sally Holloway and Dr William Tullett, an expert in the history of smell and the senses from the University of York.
We were able to smell a range of fragrances and discuss how their social, cultural and emotional meanings have changed over time, in addition to their perceived effects on the senses, health, and the body. Scents included otto of roses, apple, pear, and peach, which were said to be among the perfumes of the Garden of Eden, and Cupid’s garden in the influential courtly tale The Romance of the Rose. In addition were aphrodisiac scents such as musk, civet, and truffle oil, believed to stir lust and inflame the senses.
We finished by exploring various scents historically associated with losing love, including the smell of decaying soil and rotting weeds used to indicate sexual immorality; decaying flowers; dust and mould; rosemary for memory; and the purported scent of Hell, created as part of Odeuropa’s Historical Scent Collection.
Lunchtime pizza-making supervised by Kirsten Baker, the Pizza Midwife
Following lunch, the artists Jill Mueller and Julie Light led a creative workshop making collaged hearts inspired by the scents of finding and losing love, both in history and individual experience. The collages each had scented sachets attached, much like the first perfumed valentine cards pioneered by the perfumer and businessman Eugène Rimmel (you can see an example in the Victoria & Albert Museums’s collections here).
The scents selected by participants included sandalwood, which was associated with happy summer days; smoke, which was connected to the emotional and physical warmth of sitting around a fireside; and floral smells such as lavender and rose otto, which evoked feelings of hope.
