Burning Piano or: The grand tour of twenty small perfume bottles

„Burning Piano“ - a fragrance that sparked my imagination and ignited a firework of ideas in my brain, a fragrance that drives and haunts me, and that – luckily – just won't allow me to rest.

Last year, when I first met perfumer Gatsby Yeh at the Sunday market on Capital Hill in Seattle (cf. my interview with him in my blog post from September 2024), I had no idea what story was in store for me.
I liked some of Gatsby’s fragrances very much, others less. But when I caught the first whiff of „Burning Piano“, something clicked inside me. It felt like being in an art gallery in front of a captivating large-format canvas. And the “painter” (in fact, Gatsby has also expressed himself through painting and sculpture) was there to share his thoughts on this work of art with me: "A highly talented pianist has achieved maturity in his art. He plays his music, his favourite pieces that he loves. He is faithful to his art and tries to make a living from it. But he can’t make ends meet and has to pursue other jobs to make a living. At the end of his career and his life, he plays a last piece, Chopin's „Tristesse“, and he decides to play it on a seashore. With the last note, the piano goes up in flames and so does the pianist’s dream."

I was deeply touched by the idea of creating a fragrance to pay homage to artists who have remained true to themselves. So deeply was I touched that I kept coming up with ideas for bottle designs. I put some of my ideas into practice, and I offered two of the resulting bottles to Gatsby when I was back in Seattle this summer, as a token of appreciation for his work.

“Wow, they are so nice! Really nice!” And just as we were saying goodbye: “Wait, please! Could you imagine designing bottles for me?” “Oh yes! I would love to!” My heart was racing with excitement and I couldn't think of any more English words to express myself.
But the initial joy and overwhelm was soon followed by doubts: An order from the United States... would that even be feasible? Never mind. I would just give it a try. It would surely somehow work out, why not?

Now I had to adapt my design to Gatsby’s bottles. My first idea had been to include a real piano hammer in the composition, but it now seemed too small and too clunky for this purpose. While still in Seattle on vacation, I found piano keys in a secondhand craft store. They were a perfect fit!
New ideas immediately started coming up in my mind. I combined different pieces of wood of varying lengths, some of them charred, and I tied them together with a string.

A few drafts and WhatsApp messages later, and the prototype was finished. I arranged the piano keys and other pieces of wood like a dilapidated fence in a semicircle around the back side of the bottle, leaving enough space to allow for comfortably pressing the sprayer. And on the front side: a scrap of the last page of the sheet music...

On the one hand, this design symbolizes the sad ending of the story, on the other hand it symbolizes strength and courage. The compact shape of the bottle exudes energy, and the pieces of wood, held together by the string, further support it. The music may have faded away, but the piece is not yet over. There are still harmonies and phrases that continue to resonate in the listener, notes that may rearrange to form a new composition. The way the piano keys point upwards, beyond themselves, they represent a future that is open and full of possibilities.
My exchange with Gatsby shows the similarity of our interpretations: “In the drydown, the fragrance becomes calm and meditative. Despite the transience that characterizes both a piece of music being played and a fragrance that is sprayed on your skin, both can convey the feeling of being grounded in something good that is greater than anything else.“

And even though Gatsby just saw images and videos of my design without being able, at that point, to take the bottle in his own hands, to touch it, and feel it, he immediately ordered twenty copies.
“If you finished them before the end of November, I could take them to Polaris Olfactive Week in Stockholm.” - “Sure! They will be ready in time!”

...but that's another story... ...which I will tell in my next blog post.

Best regards from the workshop,
Barbara

… thank you dear Mairuwa, for translating my blog article!