A treasure trove of olfactory wonders — lemongrass, rose centifolia, ambergris from the bowels of a sperm whale — are on display at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, a modest garage-turned-museum home to hundreds of natural essences, antique tinctures, elusive oils and botanical oddities.
After world-renowned perfumer Mandy Aftel spent decades scouring the globe for scents, she transformed the spellbinding collection of artifacts she preserved along the way into a physical record of the natural and cultural history of the aromatic world — right in the heart of North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto neighborhood.
Forget about commercial perfumes like the classic elegance of Chanel No. 5, or even the youthful comfort bottled inside Bath and Body Works’ Warm Vanilla Sugar. Instead, Aftel has curated a tactile, hands-on museum that aims to honor the ethno-botanical and plant-oriented magic that has tickled nostrils and minds for centuries.
While her outright obsession with natural essences has attracted international acclaim, Aftel has remained firmly rooted in Berkeley since 1970 — fitting for a self-proclaimed “old hippie” who feels connected to the East Bay “down to my bones.” As a result, adventurous noses have meandered around the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents nearly every Saturday since 2017. (Admission is $25 for adults and $15 for children 17 and under, seniors, students, low-income visitors. Masks are required inside the museum).
But not everyone can trek to the East Bay for this hands-on, immersive smell experience. That’s one of the reasons why Aftel released her ninth book, The Museum of Scent: Exploring the Curious and Wondrous World of Fragrance, last year.
After three years of researching and writing, the book is a modern, 264-page homage to the 16th and 18th century “herbals” that fostered her own studies of flowers, woods, leaves, grasses, resins, musks, herbs, spices and even the nether regions of mammals — all paired with illustrations of original etchings that Aftel redrew and painted by hand.
We talked with Aftel about the magic of scent, her passion for research and the reasons her small business has continued to thrive from her Berkeley home. Here’s an edited version of that conversation:
Q: How did the idea for the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents first come to mind?
A: I had maybe half or three-quarters of what’s in the museum already in my house and home perfume studio — collected over 25 years — which I used to get out and show guests. I started thinking about what I could do, and I was in the gold country in those little old towns from the Gold Rush. Pretty much each one has a little tiny museum, which I loved. They were very kind of funky, and had interesting stuff. One day in one of those museums, I looked at Foster (my husband) and I said, “I think I could do this.” I wanted to at least try, so we converted the garage in my driveway and got to work.
It took me three years to make that place. We were moving along, solving problems and trying to figure out how to do it not in a really expensive way… but also doing many things wrong and having to redo them again. It’s very personal to us, and we’ve observed, tweaked and edited it all the way. It’s a live situation — we watch what people respond to.
Q: Why do you think there was so much interest in the beginning when the museum opened? Was the focus on “scent” a new concept for an attraction like this?
A: I think scent has magic — the actual, real elements, as opposed to the commercial enterprise. There is no group, no country, no period of time that people haven’t instinctively liked rubbing or cooking or using scented materials. They just haven’t. To me, it’s what it is to be human, in the most multicultural way. It bleeds into these materials — into religion, into sexuality, into spirituality, into cooking, into drinking. Scents have been involved in so many ways in our lives, and even if we don’t know it ourselves, I think we have some dim anthropological memory of it.
Q: Who are the people that seem to be interested in scents and your work?
A: Because it’s plants and scent, but not actually perfume, I find that we have a very diverse population that visits us from the Bay Area and from very far away. That is every age, every race, every sexuality, every everything. We have a really diverse group of people and everyone finds something that speaks to them deeply from their heritage. Because plants are so universal. The smells of plants are very universal.
At least half of our visitors are repeaters, so when they come they have this experience, they then want to share it with somebody else, so they come back again. And it’s with their mom or somebody from out of town. We’ve never had an ad, because people tell their friends – we really pass by word of mouth.
Q: Can anyone develop a palette for scents?
A: Oh yes! While there’s a lot of snobbery about, say, the vocabulary of wine, I think it’s so easy to develop your sense of smell. It can start just by going to the grocery store or cooking dinner; it’s about finding your own words, like “this is grassy” or “this is spicy.” I also feel like there’s no right or wrong with smells. You want to describe it for yourself. Your sense of language is not close to where your sense of smell is in your brain, so you have to go look for the words.
The connection to the beauty of the aromas of nature, whether you’re cooking or adorning yourself or just out in the forest, I feel like that’s an important connection that we need as humans. Without anybody trying to sell you something, I feel like this museum is a respite in a world that is moving fast and scary at times. Even in the worst of COVID, in the most depressing times politically, whenever stuff was going on, I see people just transformed by scents — me right along with them.
Q: When businesses start small, sometimes they bite off more than they can chew when trying to grow. Do you think you’d ever expand past this one physical museum?
A: I have no interest in growing, at all. As a perfumer, I’ve been very blessed with a good amount of success, and I like exactly what I’m doing. I love being small and making everything myself. I pack every package that leaves here. Every single person that buys something from me, I write them a note. I even made my own sparkle ink to put in my fountain pen.
I think there is this narrative that you have to just keep getting bigger and bigger, and do more and more. I just think that narrative is an absolute mess. I really do. For me, success really is doing something you believe in and growing with it.
MANDY AFTEL
Age: 75
Career: Perfumer, author, teacher, archivist and museum curator
Residence: Berkeley
Family: Husband Foster, son Devon
5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MANDY AFTEL
1. Her first book was an oral history on Brian Jones, the founding member of the Rolling Stones
2. Despite not being an extrovert, she aims to talk to every single guest who tours (or even calls) the museum
3. Her hometown is Detroit, Michigan
4. She has taught perfume making for more than two decades
5. She continues to follow strict Covid precautions in order to confidently preserve her sense of smell