Perfumer H’s Ink doesn’t smell of ink. It doesn’t smell like Diamine, Sailor, Herbin, or Parker ink. I checked*. Not that I want photorealism. For that I could just spill ink on my clothes, stain my fingers, splatter the table, saturate a piece of blotting paper. I usually do. (Not purposefully.) I have an ingrained smudge on a calloused pad at the edge of my middle finger.

It’s not just a one-note hum — the sort of perfume tinnitus that a lot of flat modern perfumes strive for — it has some complexity, but not enough to distract me. This is my work scent. I wear it every time I go into the office, which is not very often. It’s my disguise. It’s nice. It’s not weird. It’s not overwhelming. It’s just inoffensive. Restrained. Ink is a sensible grown up sort of perfume that is far more presentable and put together than I will ever be. 

If you know the name or look at the published list of notes then the power of suggestion kicks in hard: ink! paper! writing! libraries! wooden desks! And the perfume myth making conjours new layers into the experience of smelling, all the way to fantasies of Dark Academia. All of which is perfectly valid if that gets let loose for you but, for me? Nope. But it does have inkishness, a dark pool at its heart. And it has some weight without thickening the air. 

I find Ink to be a reassuring and grounding scent, but oddly stripped of associations. 

Which is exactly why I chose it. 

It’s also why I’ve chosen it for my first scentosaurs post in years: it has no baggage. 

* I checked many more bottles, old and new. I have a lot of ink. Miraculously I remained without a smudge on my nose.  Why should perfume be my only hoard of over-priced liquids that are used in small quantities at a time? Most fountain pens take barely 1ml to fill, and that gets me more than twenty pages with a medium nib. Just as I have multiple variations of, say, vetiver fragrances I have multiple variations of murky green inks. Ink names, by the way, sit between perfume names and lipstick on the scale of functional to ludicrous. My favourite may be “Potato of spring”. 

p.s. The late cretaceous Pteranadon sternbergi was a lot bigger than this bottle. or you. His wingspace was about as wide as the pentaceratops was long, nose to tail. They are from roughly the same period, give or take ten million years. They are, however, linked by name as the Pentaceratops is also a sternbergii, named for a paleontologist from the same family.

sorry. I’ve not got comments sorted out yet, But do email me (katie@forgetting.net)