smell – Created Curated by Sara Brown

One of the few positives from the various states of lockdown has been the increased focus on self-care and also thinking more about our home environment. The home fragrance market: candles, diffusers and vapour diffusers has enjoyed a real surge in demand as we seek ways to relax, to concentrate or even just to make our rooms (we’re spending more time in) simply smell better. Candles have been used in sacred ceremonies for centuries, to bring a peaceful ambiance into a space. But whilst their minimal light and aromas create a serene sanctuary, there are actually other reasons why you should burn candles in your home. They can actually help your mental state and well-being, essential in our third lockdown. (And hopefully final one)

The UK is one of the world’s biggest candle markets. In 2020, the estimated market was 1.9 billon. And, while the beauty industry has faced a steep decline, there has been a large increase in home fragrance. This may be vital to the survival of many beauty retailers during the pandemic, as shoppers bought more home scents such as candles and diffusers. Small independent candle makers were one of the lockdown business success stories.

There has also been a new focus on our sense of smell since the start of the COVID pandemic, as a sense that many of us took for granted and is often ranked as the least important sense. Half of patients with covid-19 may lose sense of smell and guidance rules states that a new change or loss in sense of smell should prompt a period of self-isolation. Losing the sense of smell (anosmia) has been traumatic for many people struck with COVID. The effect of it meant not just missing, the smell of fresh bread or perfume but it left many patients feeling depressed and further isolated. Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist, states that while many think of scent as an aesthetic bonus sense, it is an important link between people and the environment around them. Nine in ten patients can expect substantial improvement in their sense of smell within four weeks and using olfactory training been shown to help people improve and regain their sense of smell.

Olfactory training is a self-management strategy that involves a regular programme of using strong odours or essential oils to trigger recovery of the olfactory system. Smell training involves twice- daily sniffing of four essential oils to help the damaged olfactory nerve repair itself.

We don’t just miss the sights and sounds of our favourite places; we also miss the smells. Indeed, some brands have capitalised on this lockdown absence in creating exotic scents that are evocative of distant shores. A good-quality scented candle can remind us of places we have visited and loved. Perhaps we need this more than ever when we’re locked down in our homes and unable to travel. The soothing effect that candles have is based on how the brain processes smells. The smell of scented candles stimulates our limbic system, the part of the brain that is home to our memory and emotions.

If you need a further reason to place a handful of candles around your desk for decorative purposes, you now have the perfect excuse, as surrounding yourself with scented candles while you work can actually increase your focus and help you become more productive. Aromas like mint, lemon, orange and rosemary can invigorate your senses and help give you that extra boost you need whilst working from home.

Lighting a candle can remind you of a happier time and can make you feel better if you are feeling a little down. A Japanese study conducted on 12 participants who were depressed, showed that the smell of lemons helped, boosted their immune function and regulated hormone levels. So much so that their dosage of antidepressants was lowered. There are several essential oils that can help alleviate feelings of uneasiness, uplift your flagging spirits and promote a better, stronger, more positive state of mind. Using essential oils is a natural and proven way to help reduce the symptoms of nervousness and restore positivity, I use Bergamot essential oil (reduces hormone responses to stress) in a burner and find this both uplifting and relaxing. So, the next time you want to instantly lift your mood, try to use a candle or diffuser with citrus or rosemary scents. If you’re choosing candles for your home, then they should be natural where possible. I will write a blog about natural home scents.

The blue light that is admitted from computer screens decreases your magnesium levels, which can make you feel less tired and more anxious. (Contributing to insomnia) To combat this, shutting your light off earlier and lighting a candle can actually help you feel calmer earlier in the evening and reset to your natural sleep rhythms. When you’re not being disrupted by technology, it’s easier to listen to your body and know when to shut down for the night without being distracted. When life starts to feel overwhelming, light a candle, an oil burner or steam diffuser with several drops of essential oil. To help instil a feeling of calmness, lift anxiety and aid sleep, the following used on their own or in combination with each other can be a great help; camomile, lavender, (sedative) frankincense, neroli, rose, sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli and ylang ylang. (lifts depression)

Once you smell a candle scented by essential oils, you’ll instantly notice the difference compared to a synthetic scented candle. Also, there are concerns with the use of paraffins and other synthetic ingredients. Candles with artificial fragrances and boosters are releasing synthetic compounds into the air. This can sometimes cause skin, eye, and nose irritations for some. (Especially for those with potential allergies) Natural wax candles include: beeswax, rapeseed and soy, all have a very low environmental impacts and footprint, and I would recommend these rather than paraffin wax candles. Breathing too much of any type of smoke can potentially damage your health so ventilate your room by opening a window after extinguishing a candle.

Traditionally, oil burners have been used to diffuse oils, but now there are numerous options like nebulizing diffusers or vapour diffusers. They don’t require any form of internal heat to disperse scented oils around a room. As there’s no flame or hot wax, these can be left on for longer periods, even overnight, some have an automatic cut off after several hours. I add eucalyptus oil at night when I have a cold, to help breathing. These are ideal as a safer replacement for candles.

Vapour diffusers pump out a fragrant water vapor, (steam) these occasionally need to be filled with a small amount of water and a few drops of essential oil. They give off a fragrance at a slower pace. The result is a lighter scent but one that lingers. Vapour diffusers are one of the best and easier ways to use aromatherapy daily. If you are familiar with oils or only just starting to use them you will find that the electric vapour diffusers are really versatile and you are less likely to become over-sensitised to the oils because of a slower inhalation. I use one myself!

Nebulizing diffusers work by forcing a stream of air at high pressure through small tubes or filters that contain essential oil which then sprays fine particles of the essential oil into the air. This fine mist distributes the oil around the room. Nebulizers don’t require water but do use more oil. However, they disperse essential oils much faster and at a higher concentration.

If you have pets some essential oils are toxic to dogs and cats. If you have nebulizer, make sure the oil you’re using is safe for your pet and air out the room before you let enter the room. Avoid using an essential oil diffuser if you have birds as their respiratory tracts are very sensitive. Passive diffusers (bottles with reeds) are generally safer for homes with animals as these are more diluted so safer, it is always best to check with your vet. See the APCC’s toxic and nontoxic plant list for further details.

Both are readily available online at every price point and they make great presents. You do have to use pure essential oils not fragrance oils which can contain mineral oil. (This is actually paraffin oil and best to avoid)

I hope this has given you some insights into the benefits of home scents both for health and wellbeing.

I always keep an eye out for any interesting articles or posts about scent and the sense of smell. According to many scientific studies, smells have a greater power to evoke memory than our other senses. We cannot underestimate the importance of the sense of smell. It can take us back to different times, uplift, relax or in some cases tell us something is very wrong or even dangerous. My ex-flat mate had health problems that meant she regularly lost her sense of smell and at the same take also loss her appetite. I mentioned Smeller in a previous blog, but I want to tell you more about this, as I found it very interesting and hopefully you will too.

In 1902, the German-Japanese poet and art critic Sadakichi Hartmann staged A Trip to Japan in Sixteen Minutes, the world’s first ever scent-performance in New York. The idea was to create a work of art that appealed to his audience’s sense of smell and to evoke a journey. He claimed, there had been no apparatus before that could provide an audience with what he called a melody in odours. The performance was, however a disaster. The influx of heavy, floral perfumes was intended to evoke different countries on a journey by sea to the East, but the crowd, with only the visuals of Hartmann and two powdered women in kimonos sliding smell-soaked fabrics in front of a fan, were not impressed and Hartmann was heckled off stage after a few minutes.

Now, fast-forwarding, more than 100 years later, Hartmann would have been astonished to witness the Smeller 2.0 at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius Bau museum. This temporary installation of a machine that pumps smells one after another into a room, was debuted in 2012 and has since been exhibited in different venues. Wolfgang Georgsdorf, the artist, wants us to think about smell as an artistic experience and invented a machine called the Smeller 2.0. Closely resembling a pipe organ with its tangle of pipes and vents, it is the size of a small coffee shop, like a huge air conditioning unit. Its 64 chambers can each be loaded with a different scent, which can then be played like a musical note by the artist using a midi keyboard and digital-to-analog converters to turn electrical impulses into physical movements in the instrument.

According to other artists in the smell art community, the Smeller does what no one else in the intervening time period has ever managed to do: it pumps a series of defined, distinct smells into the room, one after the next. There are no sounds and no visuals. The scents dissipate just as the next one arrives, every inhalation a new surprise, it could be horse or a strong cheese. Georgsdorf, has spent more than 20 years getting his Smeller in front of an odience, which is what he calls those who experience it. He made the first prototype in 1996, but the idea has been in his head for almost his entire life. His first notable olfactory experiences as a child of four or five.

Georgsdorf researched into the previous attempts at creating a kinetic smell instrument. “What I saw was a series of very entertaining, triumphant failures,” he said. Sadakichi Hartmann’s electric fan was only the beginning of the 20th century’s experiments in olfactory performance. In 1906, before movie theatres even began to use sound, a newsreel of the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, was shown in a theatre in Pennsylvania, with electric fans blowing the scent of the flower through huge cotton pads into the audience. There were several further efforts to pump different scents into theatres to correspond with a movie’s plot. The most famous example of this cinema-olfaction hybrid was Hans Laube’s Smell-O-Vision, which debuted with the film The Scent of Mystery in 1960. In specially-equipped theatres, 30 different odours were dispersed from audience members’ seats when triggered by the reel. Shortly before a similar technology, Aromarama, which used a cinema’s air conditioning system to diffuse odours into a theatre, was introduced. Neither one was successful. The New York Times called Aromarama a stunt and its odour sequences elusive.

More pungent neologisms followed: John Waters film Polyester in 1981 came with a scratch and sniff card entitled Odorama, containing scents like air freshener, skunk and pizza, that corresponded to numbers flashed on screen. Later copied by Nickelodeon under the moniker Aromascope. In 1999, the iSmell, a kind of shark-fin shaped USB drive with an air freshener attached, tried to offer consumers scents triggered by their internet browsers. Despite heavy investment, once more, these were to fail.

Georgsdorf comments that:

People have misunderstood on a physical level, a chemical level, on a perceptive level, and on a psychological level. The comparison with visual and audio performance has caused confusion. We are talking here about a new form of art that does not deal with waves such as light and sound, but with particles, and particles, unlike waves, don’t just cease to exist when a stimulus stops producing them. They linger.

The key question is, how does this relate to Art? Scientists are still figuring out the intricacies of how our brains decipher scents. However, evidence suggests that the olfactory data is more deeply connected with memories than language, so is much more emotional. This makes scents difficult to talk about. We most often talk about the source of the smell, rather than the smell itself: something might smell like the pages of an old book for example. Scientists and artists have much in common, and perfumers are a mix of both.

He acknowledges that some of the difficulty lies in the artform itself. “We have 4,000 years of music history and we have zero thousand years of Osmodrama history, the vision is a new form of art that had never existed because simply the technology was not there”

For now, Georgsdorf has resisted mass-market ambitions. He seemed particularly irritated by the “wishful thinking” of the failed iSmell. But his work isn’t only about making smells into art. He is currently working on research with the University of Dresden and University Hospital in Berlin to test whether subjects with depression see an improvement in their symptoms after experiencing the distinct series of scents from the Smeller. Preliminary results suggest they do.

It’s not a gimmick, what started as a wacky experiment many years ago has been turned into a successful art installation. In the future it may feature more widely in our life’s. I am very interested to see where this leads, as many of the everyday items we use today would have been unimaginable to our ancestors. Some time in the future we could even have a home version of the Smeller!