Crafting Intentional Scents: Enriching Cultural Heritage with Educational Olfactory Reproductions

Museums internationally are using scents as a means of storytelling in their galleries, but a methodological process for developing olfactory reproductions - or historically informed scents - is still lesser known and valued. For the first time, this paper raises the importance of crafting intentional olfactory reproductions for the use in cultural heritage. It discusses how to streamline the process of commissioning olfactory reproductions with a scent designer and how to foster transparency of these productions to benefit visitor education. Insights for understanding aspects of transparency for olfactory reproductions and navigating their level of historical intent are gleaned from already established methodologies of heritage scent preservation. These young methodologies provide a framework for improving methods of olfactory storytelling within the field of cultural heritage. The Olfactory Reproduction Matrix presented in this paper compiles methodologies of heritage scent preservation into a table that acts as a practical tool for museum practitioners to use while developing olfactory reproductions in the setting of cultural heritage.