One of the first studios we visited was that of a jeweller who worked with pāua. In one corner was a bench heaped with shells, all in various stages of being shaped and sanded into pieces of body adornment. As Charles held court, I went over and leant against the bench, waiting for him to finish. As I stood in my corner I began to wonder why I could smell sushi. The seaweed nuttiness of nori kept reaching me in waves and it took me a long time to realise that it was the dust from the pāua.

The next studio belonged to a ceramicist, and this time the smell of clay was undisguised and permeated the whole space. This went on throughout the week as we visited flax weavers, printmakers, textile artists, woodworkers and painters. Every studio had its own distinct smell, something that added to the vitality and life force of the art works themselves, yet neither the artists nor Charles ever remarked upon it. This lack of scent acknowledgement was even more odd given that many of the artists ended each visit by offering us coffee or showing us around their garden, two things that did attract the attention of the nose.

I spent years trying to persuade Charles to let me do a Stop and Smell the Art show. Most works were displayed in such a manner that they were almost impossible to appreciate except through sight. Touching was largely discouraged, sound was absent from all but kinetic objects, taste was irrelevant, but it seemed to me that we could communicate art through smell. I imagined walking visitors through darkened spaces that captured the odours of shell, clay or wood before they entered the gallery itself.

‘We could prime the senses and make visitors more receptive to the exhibition.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Charles.

‘Why?’

He couldn’t answer.

Stop and Smell the Art never happened and so, perhaps in compensation, I began to experiment with my own series of art scents. It was the first time I’d given thought to creating a range of perfumes based on medium and texture, and the five scents I chose were wood, clay, shell, paint and flax. I made them by infusing raw materials in various oils, and although I tested them on my skin I knew they weren’t meant to be worn. The paint scent, for example, simply mimicked a studio with its mix of oil paint, linseed oil and a hint of turpentine. But each perfume fascinated me and I spent hours in my bedroom, testing formulas, making notes of various quantities and dilutions, until I was satisfied.

It was the thought and craft that went into making each blend that appealed to me. How a very slight variation in the dilution of one material could throw the balance of the entire perfume, turning a pale scent into a muddy one or, alternatively, a dull scent into a bright one. I learnt how to rescue a failure by going back to the place where it had begun to fall apart and starting again.