Designing an ode to an underrated sense: smell
Featured on the 2022 ‘Living with Scents’ exhibition at the Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) in San Francisco
Inhale Us, designed in 2018 by Sofia Caraza, is an essentially olfactive ceremony, aided by touch and music and shared by three close friends — a host and two guests — in a moment of creative exploration.
It allocated 5 designed pieces made by reused glass bottles and wood:
- 1 Knows ceremonial table
- 3 scent blend mixers
- 3 wooden trivets
- 3 glass hand bowls
- 9-12 smell tasting containers
The ceremonial objects represent the four elements: the table is the Earth, where the rest of Nature’s elements unite.
Smell ingredients were used to create an individual mix interpreting the element allocated to each participant. The host blended the individual mixes in a central dish for everyone to smell the unification of the elements through the aromatic smoke.
The project partly referenced the 700-year-old Japanese art of kōdō which involves collectively “listening to incense” by heating fragments of aromatic woods. Following codified and minute gestures, kōdō can take the form of ritualized games called kumi-kō, sharpening smell perception and ascribing various cultural references to each scent.
