Karmameju’s founder and product developer, Mette Skjærbæk, has been fascinated by fragrance since she was young. But how do you interpret ancient perfume recipes as modern products we want to use today?

We spoke to Mette about Glyptoteket’s historical sources, the surprising fragrance rituals of antiquity and the process of creating three new products with roots stretching back more than 2,000 years.

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Karmameju x Glyptoteket is a tribute to the perfumes of antiquity – a collaboration inspired by the ancient world’s relationship with fragrance, beauty and rituals, created in connection with the special exhibition Power and Fashion in the Roman Empire at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

Experience Karmameju’s fragrance installation from 1 October, along with three limited-edition products available exclusively at karmameju.com and in Glyptoteket’s museum shop.

“Senior researcher at Glyptoteket Cecilie Brøns’ research is fascinating and important. It offers us a glimpse into the past – into how people lived and how they used nature.

I didn’t know, for example, that fragrance was added to wine. In antiquity, wine could be perfumed with some of the same precious ingredients used on the skin and in fragrant oils – including rose, myrrh, spikenard, saffron and cinnamon. Fragrance, flavour and medicine were not yet separate worlds, but different uses of the same aromatic plants and resins. Today, for example, we flavour tea with herbs and essential oils – in a way, it is the same principle.

Fragrant flowers and herbs were steeped in oil, a process known as maceration. At the time, olive oil, moringa oil or colourless oil from unripe grapes was used to steep the plant materials. Resins or gums such as benzoin were used as fixatives to preserve the fragrance and help it last longer on the skin.

Something that has made me smile is a passage by Aristotle’s pupil, the Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus, who writes:

“The lightest are rose-perfume and kypros, which seem to be the best suited to men, as also is lily-perfume. The best for women are myrrh-oil, megaleion, the Egyptian, sweet marjoram, and spikenard: for these owing to their strength and substantial character do not easily evaporate and are not easily made to disperse, and a lasting perfume is what women require.”

In many ways, it is the opposite of how perfumes are recommended and marketed today. My view is that every fragrance is for everyone, and that there should be no limitations around what is considered masculine or feminine. We should simply choose what feels right for each of us. It is a wonderful invitation to be curious and playful when choosing perfumes and aromatherapeutic skincare.”

“The sources mention flowers including rose, lily and iris; spices such as cinnamon, cassia and cardamom; as well as a wide range of resins, woods, aromatic grasses and herbs such as marjoram and spikenard*. Resins make up a significant proportion of the ingredients in many of the surviving recipes. Perhaps this was because people favoured heavier, almost umami-like scents, and perhaps because these materials were easier to dry, store and transport.

For the exhibition and skincare products, our approach has been to convey the past while seducing in the present. We have selected the fragrances that, to us, connect antiquity with the present day.”

*Please note: Glyptoteket writes: In general, caution should be exercised when identifying a plant term recorded in an ancient text as a specific plant species in the modern Linnaean sense. As other researchers have also pointed out, the assumption that one term corresponds to one plant species was probably not applicable in antiquity, and a certain degree of flexibility in the terminology should therefore be allowed.

“Yes. In Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder describes a wide range of plants and their uses, including fragrant herbs and flowers used for both perfumes and medicinal purposes. Roses, lilies, myrrh and cinnamon, among others, appear in perfumes and ointments. The Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides also described hundreds of natural substances and their uses.”

“Yes, we know that statues were perfumed with rose oil, a fragrance that appears time and again in the written sources.

Marble statues were not simply objects to be looked at, but sensory representations in which clothing, adornment and other attributes could communicate identity and social status. Many depicted gods, rulers, the deceased or idealised people and served religious, political or commemorative functions. When a statue was washed, anointed, dressed, adorned and perfumed, the purpose was not simply to make the marble smell pleasant. These treatments could make the deity or person represented feel more present and alive.

I find it fascinating to imagine just how sensory the original experience of these sculptures must have been.”

“We do. Anything else would not feel right, because rose was such a prominent fragrance at the time.

We use Rosa damascena because its fragrance is heavenly. Our perfumer in England grows Rosa damascena, and it is indescribably sensory to stand among all those roses at the time of day when their fragrance is at its most intense.

We do not know with certainty which varieties of rose were used for rose perfume in antiquity: Rosa gallica, Rosa moschata and Rosa centifolia have been suggested. Our version is therefore not a reconstruction, but a modern interpretation inspired by rose as one of the defining fragrances of the period.”