Amber Resin

Image: amber resin melting in a lamp.

Description of notes:
The fragrance meets with a sweet fresh floral scent of geranium, juicy amyris, and amber. The amber sillage will stay with you until the end of the day, sometimes playing with notes of ambergris. After a while, a dry woody-amber note appears with a slight note of sawdust against the background of sweet labdanum. It is this aroma that you will hear more often in the aura. Powdery iris and warm, balsamic notes of benzoin resins and slightly spicy opoponax remain on the skin.

History of Creation:
This story began in Copenhagen eight years ago, when I passed by a local jewelry workshop. At the time, I was struck by how many workshops the city had—ceramics, wooden toys, jewelry and accessory makers, apparel and footwear, keyboard and stringed instrument makers—both family-run, old and new, often in semi-basements or on ground floors. Typically, they featured a small showroom for customers and an open workspace, owned and operated by the artisans themselves. They would enthusiastically share details of their craft, so I ended up visiting nearly every one. It’s worth noting that the Baltic region has always been famous for its amber, so it’s hardly surprising that one such workshop focused on shaping and inlaying natural fossilized amber into precious metals.

It was a small place where, upon entering, you encountered a display case partially revealing a workspace filled with equipment for metal rolling, grinding, and polishing. A heavy, resinous smell of processed amber, tinged with sharp nuances reminiscent of green leather in a leather goods shop, floated in from the workshop. Occasionally, the leather notes would yield to bright metallic scents of cut metal or calmer undertones of tools soaked in machine oil, evocative of a repair shop. Meanwhile, hints of coniferous resins, reminiscent of burnt rosin, were detectable throughout the room.

Later, I discovered all these qualities in natural fossilized amber oil, which exuded a dry, woody aroma with the characteristic green-leather note and accents reminiscent of wood shavings in a carpenter’s workshop. Even at a 5% dilution, it was intensely amber-like, sweet, and notably dry. Due to high peroxide content, it’s practically prohibited for use in perfumery, but I wanted to recreate its smoky amber aroma—complete with sweet and resinous burnt-rosin facets—thus inspiring the fragrance’s name: Amber Resin.