The Laboratory of Scents

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The perfumer lifts a small glass bottle and sprays the finished fragrance onto the customer’s wrist. Light floral notes unfold instantly, with lotus rising above the rest. The woman in the raspberry-colored blouse leans in to smell the perfume as it settles onto her wrist.

“The fragrance is floral, isn’t it?” a man standing nearby asks.

She nods. “I especially love the scent of lotus.”

He smiles. “Lotus is the dominant note in your perfume.”

“Your perfume is pink and floral,” says the man, who turns out to be the founder of the Perfume Museum and Laboratory.

Every scent holds a story. So does the small museum on Tumanyan Street. Hidden behind shelves lined with antique perfume bottles, and centuries-old artifacts, the Perfume Museum in Yerevan is a multifunctional space: a laboratory, a museum and a classroom. At its center is the founder and perfumer from Gyumri, Sargis Azaryan, whose fascination with fragrance extends far beyond simply creating them.

Azaryan’s journey into perfumery began more than 30 years ago, through an interest in art, history and culture. After beginning to build a vintage perfume collection in the early 1990s, he spent years researching perfume history, experimenting with molecules, working with collectors across the region, and collaborating with chemists to explore local perfume production. Those efforts led to the creation of Armenia’s Perfume Laboratory Museum.

Azaryan believes the country’s connection to fragrance has long been underestimated. “People associate Armenia with cognac or apricots,” he says. “I believe Armenia is a country of aromas and food. Wherever there is cuisine, there is the sense of smell. They are inseparable.”

Shortly after smelling the newly created perfume, Azaryan gave a tour of his collection of historical perfumes and artifacts from Armenia and around the world.

Armenia’s role in the history of perfumery is far greater than many people realize. Azaryan says his interest in perfume-making also grew from the fact that Armenia’s role is rarely mentioned in perfume literature. Yet numerous ancient perfume vessels and aromatic containers have been discovered throughout the region of Greater Armenia.

Speaking about the wider historical region, he points to archaeological discoveries that reveal a long-standing connection between people and fragrance.

Rituals depicted in prehistoric rock carvings, he explains, were often accompanied by the burning of aromatic substances, a tradition that continued for thousands of years. Archaeologists have discovered incense vessels and aromatic containers dating back 4,000-6,000 years across Armenia․

The Armenian word for perfume, otsaneliq (օծանելիք), reflects this connection. The root otsel (օծել) means “to anoint,” linking fragrance with ritual and spirituality. Azaryan also draws an interesting parallel with the Russian word dukhi (духи), meaning perfume, which directly translates as “spirits”.

He points to the 4th century, when myron (holy chrism) was prepared in the Armenian Christian tradition from forty flowers and aromatic materials, making it part of religious practice. Beyond rituals, aromatic plants have also played an important role in Armenia’s history: Armenian geranium, cultivated in Armavir until the 1980s, became a significant source of fragrance materials. Historical references also describe perfumes and floral compositions made for Armenian kings and queens from dozens of flowers, highlighting the country’s relationship with scent across centuries.

The tour continued past displays of perfume bottles from the Soviet Union and across Europe, before shifting to the process of perfume making itself.

Every fragrance at the laboratory is created according to strict professional standards. The perfumes are made from concentrated aromatic materials that require careful handling. Azaryan claims that all of the ingredients in their laboratory are licensed by the IFRA (International Fragrance Association) and are imported from Switzerland, France, Spain and the United States.

Like memories, not all scents are meant to linger. Azaryan explains that every perfume ingredient has its own lifespan. While some raw materials can remain stable in storage for centuries, the delicate top notes—the first scents we notice—often disappear 10 to 30 minutes after application. That fleeing nature is precisely what gives them their lightness.

For clients with allergies, he creates fragrances with gentler ingredients and lower concentrations.

Creating a perfume is a delicate process. For those interested in the magic of mixing scents, Azaryan teaches perfumery at the museum. In his view, the ideal perfumer should know school-level mathematics, physics and chemistry, but above all, art. “We often think in colors,” he says.

Colors, he believes, are tied to the way people perceive and imagine the world. Beyond science, creating a fragrance requires imagination and philosophical thinking.

No two perfumes are identical. Rather than reaching for a standard formula, Azaryan begins by observing the person sitting across from him.

“A perfume should not hit a person in the face. It should not shout. It has to be subtle. A fragrance should have depth and meaning,” he explains.

A conversation follows, helping him understand the client’s preferences before he suggests individual ingredients. “Every person has their own aura,” he says. Together, they decide which notes should be dominant in the composition and which should remain in the background. Azaryan then builds the “architecture” of the fragrance: the proportions of the ingredients. The client takes part in choosing the ingredients, but does not smell the blended perfume until it is complete.

“The scent in the mixing beaker isn’t the same as the finished perfume,” he explains. “If someone keeps smelling it throughout the process, they start to interfere.” Only after the formula has been refined and bottled is the perfume sprayed onto the client’s skin, where it can be smelled a few seconds later.

For Azaryan, the first step in creating the fragrance is to visualize it.

If the perfume is floral, what kind of flowers are they: wildflowers growing in a field, or carefully cultivated roses? Should the fragrance evoke an orchard, a coal mine, a village, first love, or even war?

“Every fragrance tells a story,” he says. “A perfumer has to assemble the scents that belong to that story.”

The majority of Azaryan’s students continue exploring perfumery long after completing his courses. While some have not pursued perfume making professionally, they have, in his words, “become perfumers in spirit.” To nurture that curiosity, Azaryan has developed his own teaching methodology that differs from the traditional approaches in countries such as France.

Watching schoolchildren become fascinated with perfumery has convinced him that perfume making in Armenia has the potential to grow into a genuine industry. His goal extends beyond perfume making: to cultivate a new generation of fragrance makers and help establish the country as a place where the art of perfumery can flourish.

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