Bidzina Kanchaveli is a Georgian artist who grew up in a village where his grandfather made food and drink from what the family grew, and those smells never left him. He wrote and staged four plays, and made the short films Novice No21 and 7½ Women, which won festival prizes, and the feature 1000 Kings. He then spent years developing flavours under the Tom Klark's brand, up to a year on each, selling in China, South Korea, Japan and Europe, before founding his own label in Berlin.
He does not work as a classical perfumer and treats smell as a working instrument that acts on perception and memory. His years as a dramaturg taught him to cast aromas like actors in a play. For the Emotions Series he waited until fear, envy, hate or grief actually took hold of him, then composed from inside that state, drawing on the smells of the human body rather than classical structures.
Kanchaveli Fear, Kanchaveli Hate, Kanchaveli Grief and Kanchaveli Envy are extraits, each in handmade porcelain as a one-off piece. The Color Series eaux de parfum come sealed in numbered sculptures of up to 600 grams from his Berlin atelier. Kanchaveli White moves from vanilla, bergamot and orange zest to saffron and leather, while Kanchaveli Yellow pairs leather and citrus over cinnamon inside a cylinder of concrete.
