Portals

$44.00
sold out

Last 10 copies available. If purchased with Smell Words, Portals will ship in late December.

In Portals, we embrace the imprecision of language, approaching scent as a conduit to the divine. Ten perfumes selected at random conjure false memories, enabling time travel, teleportation, and hyperphantasia — opening portals to imagined worlds.

Portals features responding prose and poems by fragrance writer Kashina, writer/olfactory artist Noele Lusano, and ten full-color paintings by artist Elizabeth Doering.

“A collection of poems describing perfumed ghosts that cannot be seen, or even smelled, but conjured in the mind through text alone. The longing for a companion scent to pair with each is fulfilled, in part, by a scent strip created specifically as an accompaniment, but is not a muse (so that the reader knows). An enjoyable, yet melancholy bit of fragrance ephemera, enjoyed in bed with an aromatic London fog to start off a rainy morning.” — Review of Portals by @olfactomancy

Details:

  • First and final printing, limited edition of 100

  • Foil-stamped softcover

  • Ten full-color images

  • 110 pages

  • Comes with a limited edition scent strip created for Portals by Noele Lusano

Last 10 copies available. If purchased with Smell Words, Portals will ship in late December.

In Portals, we embrace the imprecision of language, approaching scent as a conduit to the divine. Ten perfumes selected at random conjure false memories, enabling time travel, teleportation, and hyperphantasia — opening portals to imagined worlds.

Portals features responding prose and poems by fragrance writer Kashina, writer/olfactory artist Noele Lusano, and ten full-color paintings by artist Elizabeth Doering.

“A collection of poems describing perfumed ghosts that cannot be seen, or even smelled, but conjured in the mind through text alone. The longing for a companion scent to pair with each is fulfilled, in part, by a scent strip created specifically as an accompaniment, but is not a muse (so that the reader knows). An enjoyable, yet melancholy bit of fragrance ephemera, enjoyed in bed with an aromatic London fog to start off a rainy morning.” — Review of Portals by @olfactomancy

Details:

  • First and final printing, limited edition of 100

  • Foil-stamped softcover

  • Ten full-color images

  • 110 pages

  • Comes with a limited edition scent strip created for Portals by Noele Lusano

About the contributors:

Kashina’s ongoing scent journal started in 2017 and appears on Instagram at @illicium.verum.nova. Her collections include East of Borneo (2020), Fotoaromanzo (2022), and Messages From A Dark Room (2024), all published by Antifurniture.

Noele Lusano is a writer, designer, and olfactory artist. She founded Ex Libris Odoratis with Aubrey Gurtovenko in 2020. Her work explores the interplay between olfactory memory, place, and cultural identity. She is the author of Another Grey City: A Scented Story, a travel memoir, also published by Ex Libris Odoratis as a limited edition.

A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Elizabeth Doering is a painter, colorist, and yoga practitioner. Her latest collection, Color Wells, reflects an ongoing exploration of color and form.

Read more about the contributors at the Ex Libris Odoratis blog.

 

Portals is generously supported by:

Kim Winderman
Rachel Cereca
Jeani Quade
Maxwell Williams
Jen Siems
Fahad Mayet
Cherry Cheng
Michael Nordstrand
Giovanna Dal Bom