VIRTUAL EVENT
***6:30 PM EST***
In 2017, award-winning natural perfumer and author Mandy Aftel opened a one-room museum―the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents―in her backyard in Berkeley, California, to help a modern audience rediscover the enchantment of this lost world. Her museum has attracted thousands of enthusiastic visitors and has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Goop, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other media outlets.
Now Aftel has created The Museum of Scent, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent. She guides us through the different families of botanical fragrances (including flowers, woods, leaves and grasses, and resins), depicting each plant with a hand-colored antique woodcut and revealing its olfactory notes and lore. Special chapters are devoted to the most rare and precious fragrances―such as ambergris, formed of a rare secretion of the sperm whale―and to antique essential oil bottles, handwritten recipe books, and other evocative artifacts. The Museum of Scent, which includes a bookmark subtly scented with a natural essence, invites us on a sensuous, imaginative journey.
In celebration of Aftel’s new book, MOFAD is thrilled to welcome Mandy Aftel and culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris for a virtual conversation about the natural and cultural history of scent and its important role in the world of food and drink.
Tickets include the option to purchase The Museum of Scent by Mandy Aftel *shipped to your door by Abbeville Press. *US only
MANDY AFTEL
Mandy is an internationally known artisan perfumer and authority on natural fragrance, is the owner of Aftelier Perfumes and the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, California. Her other books include Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume, which helped sparked the natural perfume renaissance and has been translated into eight languages. Aftel's work has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and numerous other major outlets. To learn more about Mandy go to, https://www.aftelier.com/.
DR. JESSICA B. HARRIS
Dr. Jessica B. Harris is America’s leading scholar on the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. Dr. Harris received the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, and she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021. In the same year, her book High on the Hog was adapted into a Netflix series; in 2022, the series won a Peabody and an NAACP Image Award, and was renewed for a second season. She served as the head curator for MOFAD’s previous exhibition, African/American: Making the Nation’s Table.