Making Perfume with a Shorthand Key of Descriptors
Making Perfume with a Shorthand Key of Descriptors
In 2007, when I launched my perfumery course on the Internet, I put together an expansive, detailed series of forms, charts, and educational materials to assist my students in their studies. There are organoleptic evaluation forms, an aromatic lexicon, several Excel worksheets, and much more. One way to help students quickly and easily jot down scent impressions was a reference sheet I call the Shorthand Key to Comprehensive Descriptors for Organoleptic Evaluations. The Key is designed to allow the perfumer to use three-letter references for scent properties. Some “full terms” the perfumer is familiar with, and some “shorthand” key terms:
The inspiration for the Key came from a similar resource in the book An Introduction to Perfumery by Tony Curtis and David. G. Williams. I wrote to the publishers, Micelle Press, and received permission to adapt the Key for my students. The Key is a starting point, to be used with the Aromatic Lexicon, another resource meant to jog the student’s ability to find the words to describe a scent. Once the words are found, they can be written longhand, or, more easily, jotted down with the Key descriptors.
Students are encouraged to add to the Aromatic Lexicon, and also to add to the Shorthand Key, according to their observations. Both forms are provided to the students as Word documents, so they’re easily editable.
For those of you interested in studying perfumery, perhaps already starting to read books and figure out the process, I hope the Key, provided below, can assist you. If you click it on, it should open up full size, and you can save it to your hard drive. If you’re serious about making perfume, encourage you to enroll in the Natural Perfumery Institute, where helpful forms like this, and a professional textbook can provide a solid foundation in perfumery.
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