DURARE is collaborating with the KNAW Young Academy project—Het Geheugen van Geur—to reconstruct a seventeenth-century fragrance created by Constantijn Huygens. Multi-disciplinary researchers from the humanities and sciences came together at the Utrecht ArtLab to follow Huygens’s recipe and distill a mixture of flower petals, spices, and herbs. In the blogpost “Making Scents of the Past” the DURARE team explains how we went about the reconstruction and discusses the importance of such laboratory work for historical research on durability. For the Dutch translation, see “Vervlogen Geuren Distilleren“.

The results can be smelled during the exhibition Constantijn Huygens. Geuren en Beelden at the museum, Huygens’ Hofwijck, 6 April – 3 July 2022.