This perfume (supposedly) smells like the end of the world

The exact date of the apocalypse is as yet unknown. Yet the Book of Revelation gives one idea of what it might look like. 

But what will the end of the world smell like? Well, for that, we don't have to wait. A quick flight across the Atlantic will take you to the Carroll/Fletcher art gallery in London — home of a perfume that, apparently, smells like the end of the world.

[I]t begins with a sort of sweet, incense, kind of high-church smell. And as it extends, it becomes more metallic, more kind of ozone-y. There's very much a sense of blood.- Jon Thomson

Jon Thomson and his wife Alison Craighead are the artists behind this aromatic ode to Armageddon. Thomson tells As it Happens guest host Laura Lynch about the perfume.

Laura Lynch: Mr. Thomson, why would someone like to smell like the End of Times?

Jon Thomson: From an artist's perspective, it's kind of an instruction-based work. So what we wanted to do is take all the olfactory materials, all the things that make a kind of smell in the Book of Revelation, as it's published in a version of the Bible — the King James version, which was published in 1611 — and then to pass that over to Euan McCall, who's a perfumer based in Edinburgh, and for him to then make a perfume from that list.

"We tried to be a little bit forensic, to look at information in the [Book of Revelation] that might produce a smell — the sea, a plague, horses, rods of iron,  the earth broken open.- Jon Thomson, artist behind "Apocalypse" perfume

LL: I hear what you're saying, but couldn't you have created something less morbid?

JT: Well, it's not morbid in some ways. One of things we asked Euan to do was actually to make the scent wearable. That was really our only instruction. And the Book of Revelation is a hugely poetic rendition of the kind of vision that envisages the Apocalypse. 

LL: How did you figure out what it would smell like?

JT: Well, we didn't know. And we certainly didn't start from the basis of having any sense of what an Apocalypse might smell like, because certainly at the moment we don't think that we are necessarily living through one. In medieval times people, in the purest sense, really thought that they were actually inhabiting the End Days. And that's why we tried to be a little bit forensic, and to actually look at information in the book that is really just concrete, in the sense that it might produce a smell — so the sea, a plague, horses, rods of iron,  the earth broken open.  

LL: And I also understand you created the smell of burnt flesh?

JT: Yeah. When you put it on, it begins with a sort of sweet, incense, kind of high-church smell. And as it extends, it becomes more metallic, more kind of ozone-y. There's very much a sense of blood. Certainly at the exhibition launch on Wednesday a lot of people really picked up on that.

LL: And blood is 'wearable'?

JT: In a perfume, these things get transferred into a kind of arrangement, or a composition . And they function quite differently. It changes a lot as you wear it over a few hours. You get a slight sense of putrefaction. Again, that's very sweet.  

LL: Are visitors to the exhibit able to try the perfume?

JT: Yes. The perfume is a very limited edition. It's only 50 bottles. But if you ask at the desk, there is a bottle there with sample sticks, or of course you can use your wrists, to try it on.

LL: How much is it?

JT. About 300 pounds. We'll have to sell quite a few to recover our costs. It costs quite a lot to make.