Treasures to Share: English Language Works by Perfumer Edmond Roudnitska

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Edmond Roudnitska
image courtesy Art et Parfum site


Many English-only-speaking perfumers have commented on various internet forums that they are frustrated by the fact that they cannot read the written works of famed French perfumer Edmond Roudnitska. His books, L'Intimit du Parfum and L'Esthtique en Question and L'Esthtique du Parfum, when they are available, are only in French. An essay in English was published in the 1974 book Perfume by William I. Kaufman, and that is where I first became acquainted with his writing, and I have reread that essay many, many times over the years.

A chapter from Perfumes: Art, Science and Technology edited by Lamparsky and Muller is available via Google books but I was very frustrated at only able to see a portion of a page at a time, so I gave up trying to read it. Reading off a screen really strains my eyes.

So I wrote to Edmond's son, Michel, a renowned perfumer in his own right, asking if he knew of any English language articles by his father, having heard of some Dragco Reports, and he promptly offered me what Dragco reports and other published works he had on hand. Michel has an interview with his father that appeared in English in the National Geographic in 1995 on his site Art et Parfum that is quite wonderful to read.

The works of the father and son are listed on Now Smell This.

The articles arrived today, six in total, and I am very excited by these treasures. Michel stipulated that they are to be shared, and I am working on scanning them and uploading them in PDF form for everyone.

One of them is the 48-page long chapter from Perfumes: Art, Science and Technology! This is going to take a lot of time, since I am handling the paper very carefully to preserve its quality. I have scanned just one so far, the earliest, from 1969. Reprinted from the S.P.C Year Book the title is "Where Are We Going?" You can find it on my website for downloading. It was good to start out with a short - four pages - because I am not very PDF-savvy, and I wish to find the most efficient, clear method for scanning them, and if anyone can assist me with technical advice, I would appreciate it.

In the meantime, please enjoy this forty-year-old article, previously unpublished, as far as I can tell, on the Internet, now available to everyone. Wonderful!

Comments

  1. Marlene10/22/2009 7:52 PM

    Anya, Thank you so much for bringing these very important articles to us and for taking the time to contact Michel Roudnitska. Many thanks to him as well. What a treasure trove!!

    Marlene Goldsmith

    ReplyDelete
  2. BitterGrace10/22/2009 8:07 PM

    Thank you, Anya. It's wonderful to have the chance to read this material.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10/22/2009 9:56 PM

    Thank you so much for doing this Anya! I've read some of Edmond Roudnitska's writings but would love to read more. I'm really looking forward to these. I'll email you with a few pdf optimization settings I've used before. Btw I just downloaded this one from your site in 20 seconds and it worked just fine! Many thanks for taking time to do this. :) It's generous of both you and Michel. --Laurie from SSS

    ReplyDelete
  4. Divina10/23/2009 6:22 AM

    Thank you so much! This is wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10/23/2009 9:19 AM

    Thank you Anya (and Thank you Mr. M. Roudnitska)!

    ReplyDelete
  6. JoAnne Bassett10/23/2009 6:29 PM

    Thank you Anya for sharing these with the world..

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnyasGardenPerfumes10/23/2009 6:56 PM

    Thanks for reading and helping archive this treasure!

    I just figured out how to reduce the size of the PDF, and it's now 250kb, if anyone would like to DL it again. It prints out as well as the bigger file.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Meredith10/24/2009 8:23 PM

    Hi Anya!

    Wow, I am very much looking forward to these. If you need any technical assistance I would be absolutely delighted to help you however I can. I'm a graphic designer and relatively savvy with PDF. You can e-mail me at sweetanthem (@) gmail.com if you need to.

    Cheers,

    Meredith

    ReplyDelete
  9. Alyssa10/27/2009 1:56 PM

    Hooray! Thanks so much for this work and generosity, Anya!

    ReplyDelete
  10. queen_cupcake10/27/2009 2:58 PM

    Thank you so much for posting this article. I recently discovered Basenotes' website and a whole new world has opened itself to me. I have always love perfumes, but now I have a community with which to identify and communicate. I am also really happy to have discovered your website and hope to return to it soon. Kind regards, EW

    ReplyDelete

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