Iconic Smells

I asked Facebook friends what smells evoke early memories? 
Many responded. Often their memories strike a chord also with me.

Ultimately I might paste some of those observations anonymously here, but for now I beg any reader to please suggest an iconic smell, or a few.

If you feel the smell is strongly bound to a time / era or place, please add a note. I'll start with a few:

• freshly mown grass
• the season's first wood fires (in Maine, before noses stuff-up for the winter)
• creosote (maybe old telephone poles, or a recently tarred road)
• popcorn
•       .... what smells move, arouse, or awaken you?

Can you smell well?

• Can a person improve their sense of smell?

Hyperosmia is increased olfactory acuity (heightened sense of smell). But what's a baseline talent in the realm of human smell-ability?  I don't know.

As I learn more, I'll add detail below.

Anosmia is lack of a sense of smell. Hyposmia is reduced ability to smell.

Why Smell Museum?

I'm a child of the 1950s  and as kids we learned to stop & smell the roses...
( we were simultaneously under threat of sudden violent nuclear vaporization ).

For a very long time I've been intrigued by smells, although:

• my own abilities & sense of smell (and taste) aren't remarkably strong
• my vocabulary for describing, visualizing & recalling smells is still poor

Smells are memorable, but they're transient. They are intimate and emotive.

Smell confronts us with life & lucidity, and smell is a channel to more vividly recall the past. I've known for a long time that sense of smell is important - but more recently recognized how little most of us know or think about smell. Scent & fragrance can be forms of art, but are typically invisible and often ignored.

Smell is widely considered a shabby disreputable sense. Words for olfactory perception (smell) are disguised with assorted euphemisms & synonyms, including aroma, bouquet, emanation, emission, essence, fetor, flavor, fragrance, funk, muskiness, odor, perfume, reek, scent, smell, sniff, spice, stench, stink, taint, tang, taste, whiff, etc... in addition to the artificial masking of actual smells.

Every big city has many museums for visual arts, but very few museums now collect fragrances. There are some great perfume museums: the best perhaps the Musée International de la Parfumerie (Musées de Grasse, in southeast France), but in the broad sense of smell & science & culture there's been no true Smell Museum. That will now change.

Smell is more than roses. The good, the bad, the ugly - many smells arouse us, some stimulate memories, a few trigger excitement or perhaps enchant passions. I'm curious about unloved smells - and if they even exist...

We can learn a lot by confronting smell. Smell Museum can provide a great day out of entertainment & fun. Smell affects can trigger odd responses & stories of the past. We can better get to know different generations, our friends and ourselves.

It is long past time to rehabilitate smells. Let's reveal & revel in the rich world of smell. Comments welcome.

Welcome to the Smell Museum

We don't yet have buildings, we don't yet have money. We don't yet have displays traveling the world to other museums for joint exhibitions. But we've literally hundreds of great ideas relating to Smell Museum!

The official webpage is smellmuseum.org
   smellmuseum.com  works as well...

These blog pages can be more interactive & informal than the official site.

Aloha & let's have fun.