Bidzina Kanchaveli: A Perfume Your Nose Has to Learn

Bidzina Kanchaveli made Fear while he was afraid. Logic and a technical command of aromas took him only so far, so he watched for it in himself instead, waited for the moment a feeling went solid, and worked from inside it while it lasted. Hate, Envy and Grief were made the same way, each one begun while the feeling it is named for was still in the room.

The rest of the house follows from that. The four Emotions arrive as porcelain sculptures and the two Colour perfumes in cast concrete, the notes inside them sit in an order of their own, and the first drop of an Emotion goes onto a porcelain coin.

What he wants a smell to do

Before perfume there was theatre. For years he worked as a dramaturg, and wrote all four of the plays he staged, which taught him that a story is not owned by the medium it arrives in. Aromas turned out to carry his stories perfectly well on their own. "I do not work as a classical perfumer," he writes. He wants a smell to act on perception, on memory, on whatever state you are in when you meet it, so he builds them unfamiliar on purpose, often with no clear reference. A smell you cannot name sends the mind to work, and language goes hunting for new images.

Where he puts the notes

His compositions step away from classical perfume structure and take their language from the smell of the human body, and the note lists bear it out. Hate has two tiers and nothing between them, animal on top and spice at the base. Grief finishes on fruit, which in most perfumes is an opening. White closes on a green accord, usually a top and heart effect. Yellow starts with leather, which almost everywhere else is a base. Fear and Envy run in the ordinary order, so it is a habit and never a rule.

A cigarette burning out in a tin ashtray under a bare bulb, in a derelict concrete room. Hate is animal from the first breath, with nothing bright on top to stand behind, then warm spice pushes up through it, dense and a little airless, with no floral middle to ease the turn. Pleasing you was never the job. For many people it is entirely unfamiliar, and depending on where they grew up, nothing in their memory matches it. Cold weather and late hours suit it, and a first wearing is an experiment. The nose has to learn this one: irritation to start with, attraction after that, and a fascination that arrives in its own time.

Grief, Envy and Fear

Each of the four is a porcelain sculpture made by hand, limited and one of a kind. He asks one thing of whoever ends up with them: that they reconsider their own negative emotions.

An empty dining room flooded with still water, open sky where the ceiling should be, the hour after everyone leaves. Grief starts on a clear, legible floral, the prettiest opening he makes, and the change begins exactly when you think you have it placed. Spice arrives, the flowers go soft at the edges, new notes surface as the familiar ones fade, and it ends on fruit, sweet with something sour under it, a long way from where it began. It wants a long, quiet evening.

Envy is built to be missed. You smell it, it does not do what you expected, and it goes back on the shelf. Later something is absent from the room and you find yourself at your own wrist, hunting. Spice comes and goes before you can pin it down, animal warmth moves into the gap, and leather arrives with smoke threaded through it. It finishes louder than it began, and the restraint is the whole composition. Rain down a grimy sash window, one amber lamp in the room beyond.

Two opposing forces meet in Fear, and the first is comfort: cream and soft fruit, rounded, nearly edible, with nothing in the opening to warn you. The fruit thickens, animal warmth moves underneath it, and leather comes up through all of it, dry and faintly smoky, a pale curtain lifting in the doorway of a fluorescent-lit corridor. Deep familiarity and deep strangeness share the same space. The sweetness lets you wear it; the leather stops it being nice. It outlasts everything else he makes.

What the porcelain coin is for

Each of the four arrives sealed in a package you cut open along a marked line, and inside, beside the sculpture, sits a porcelain coin. One drop goes on the coin and rests there. An hour or two later you smell the coin again, and only then does the perfume go on skin, with no cosmetics on it to get in the way. Over time the coin and your skin stop smelling the same, and the gap between them is yours. Even his soap carries no description of its scent, so the first impression belongs to whoever smells it. A decant comes without a coin, but the clean skin and the hour or two are still yours. None of the four was made to be judged in five minutes.

The two he cast in concrete

The Colour Series is the other half of the atelier. White and Yellow are cast in concrete, each piece sealed by hand in his Berlin atelier, limited, numbered and heavy at up to 600 grams. White's texture is rough, its geometry clean, smooth surfaces around a fractured core.

White is the daylight one: a bowl of green plums on a peeling windowsill, rain on the glass, a lamp burning somewhere behind. Fruit opens it, crisp where you expect sweet, warm spice runs through the middle, and a green accord closes it, well ahead of everything else, so White reads fresh more than fruity. Spring and summer afternoons suit it, and it is the easiest of the six to wear.

Yellow is leather with citrus cut across it, dry woods underneath and cinnamon at the edges: charred lemon halves smoking on a raw concrete slab, a worn leather glove beside them. Cooler weather suits it, daytime through evening, and its concrete cylinder is a storage medium for ideas.

Gouttes Rares keeps all six as decants, drawn from sealed bottles, in the Bidzina Kanchaveli decants collection.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Bidzina Kanchaveli?

The maker behind the artisanal perfume atelier that carries his name. Years as a dramaturg came first: he wrote and staged four plays of his own before he turned to perfume, and he does not consider himself a classical perfumer, treating scent instead as a tool that acts on perception and memory. He makes four Emotions in hand-made porcelain and two Colour Series perfumes cast in concrete, the concrete pieces sealed one by one in his Berlin atelier.

What does Bidzina Kanchaveli Hate smell like?

It is animal in the first breath, warm and unguarded, and then dense spice pushes up through it, with no bright opening and no floral middle in between. Its note list has two tiers only, animal over spice. Many people find it entirely unfamiliar, and it takes more than one wearing before the fascination arrives.

What is the porcelain coin that comes with the Emotions?

Each of the four Emotions, Fear, Hate, Grief and Envy, is a hand-made porcelain sculpture packed with a porcelain coin. The instruction is one drop on the coin, an hour or two of waiting, then a second smell of the coin before the perfume goes on clean skin. The coin and your skin end up smelling different from each other, which is what the wait is for. Only the four Emotions come with a coin, so a decant arrives without one.

How long do Bidzina Kanchaveli perfumes last?

Fear runs longest, 10 to 12 hours with a strong trail. The other five hold an evening: Hate, Envy and Grief last 8 to 10 hours, White and Yellow 6 to 8.

Where can I buy Bidzina Kanchaveli samples or decants?

Gouttes Rares carries all six as decants drawn from sealed bottles. Fear, Hate, Grief and Envy come in 1, 2, 5 and 10 ml; White and Yellow in 2, 5 and 10 ml. All six sit together in the Bidzina Kanchaveli decants collection.