The Smell of Success Isn't Always Sweet In This Line of Work
Two years ago, the City Museum of Stockholm contacted Frank Knight with a strange request: Could he re-create the smell of an Egyptian mummy?
Mr. Knight, who is in the smell business in a small way, had no firsthand knowledge. So he consulted the Internet, identified embalming fluids and perfumes likely to have been used by the Egyptians, mixed them up, threw in a few other odors, and came up with an essence that smelled really bad.
"It's a very eerie smell. It's one my wife doesn't like," says Mr. Knight, owner of a little company here that comes up with unusual aromas with peculiar names. A curator for the Stockholm museum says that although the smell is "disgusting," it worked for an exhibit on ancient medicines.
The demand for oddball odors is on the rise. Retail stores, as well as museums and exhibitions are using aromas to give their displays an added air of realism.
Lunn Poly, a United Kingdom travel firm, uses electric dispensers in some of its stores to warm and exude a coconut scent devised by Mr. Knight. "It had an immediate reaction with customers because it reminded them of suntan lotion and tropical places," says a spokesman for Lunn Poly.
International Flavors & Fragrances, the big purveyor of flavors and fragrances in New York, is creating the smells of meteorites and body odor, among others, for the pending New York Hall of Science exhibit on extraterrestrial life. A hospital in Orlando, Fla., called Florida Hospital Celebration Health, uses coconut smells to create a "seaside theme" in its X-ray and imaging department. The hospital says the enticing gimmick has reduced appointment cancellations.
There are no standard chemical recipes for Mr. Knight's offbeat aromas, such as "Sports Changing Room," which he sells online, and "Dragon's Breath." Operating as others in the field do, he uses a kind of hit-or-miss approach, isolating dominant smell "notes," finding chemicals that match them, and then experimenting with various additives until he feels he has achieved the desired result.
"It's a bit of science and a bit of art," says Simon Harrop, managing director of Aroma Co., of Oxfordshire, England, which makes a "new-car smell" that British car maker Vauxhall uses in some of the used cars it sells. Aroma Co.'s other products include the artificial marijuana smell it created for a party following a showing of the movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." It concocted one called "human sacrifice" for a theatrical production of Oedipus.
ScentAir Technologies of Santa Barbara, Calif., makes smells such as "machine oil" and "rain forest." Its "evil cotton candy" smell contains a hint of dill pickles. "That's the evil bit," says Pamela Knock, director of operations at ScentAir. The smell was used in Florida last year for a haunted house at the Universal Orlando Resort.
Few have gone as far in the search for evil odors as the 58-year-old Mr. Knight, who is untrained in chemistry or perfumery and whose business, Dale Air, is a modest operation. Mr. Knight invents the smells, and his wife and a colleague help run the office. Most orders are the result of word of mouth, so marketing is minimal. Dale Air has about 300 scents in its repertoire. Mr. Knight won't discuss earnings. Most of Mr. Knight's odors sell for roughly $160 a liter, although the elusive ones can be more expensive. Frankincense, created for a Queen of Sheba exhibit, goes for about $380.
A few weeks ago, an English zoo and an artist independently asked Mr. Knight to come up with a dead-body odor. With the help of another Internet search, Mr. Knight discovered that a key chemical associated with the odor of putrefaction is diaminobutane. He ordered some and diluted it in a solvent called dipropylene glycol. But the result -- a greenish liquid -- didn't quite smell like decaying bodies, at least to him. So, Mr. Knight continued to refine it.
On a Web site devoted to forensics, he learned that a decomposing body often releases sulfurous gases. Confident that he had found the missing ingredient, he added a few drops from a flask he had labeled "rotten eggs," then stepped back. The room reeked and so did Mr. Knight, but he was not yet satisfied. "It's still not right," he said with a sigh. "At some stage, I'll have to visit a mortuary and see what rotting flesh really smells like."
Mr. Knight mixes his potions in a one-room lab containing beakers, goggles, a bottle-sealing machine, and a wall of aluminum flasks containing different odors. The potions are mostly in liquid form and slowly release their aromas when heated in electric dispensers. "Havana cigar" is sickly sweet, while "iron smelting" smells like a rusty pipe.
Mr. Knight is tight-lipped about most of his recipes. Picking up a flask labeled "Japanese Prisoner of War," he says: "I can tell you that it combines tropical smells and the odor of sweaty feet." But he would go no further: "Anything more would be like asking Coca-Cola how they make their drink."
A onetime life-insurance salesman and taxi driver, Mr. Knight stumbled into his vocation after a stint selling air fresheners for Fred Dale, the former owner of Dale Air. Mr. Dale, who died earlier this year, concocted peculiar odors as a sideline. His first customers were doctors who used smells such as "Granny's Kitchen" and "Coal Fire" to jog the memories of elderly dementia patients in British nursing homes. Mr. Knight bought Dale Air in 1999 and expanded the "themed aromas" business.
A longtime customer is the Jorvik Viking Center in the town of York, England, which sits atop a 10th-century Viking site excavated in the 1970s. The thousand-year-old smells of cesspools, household remains and horse manure "hit us at full blast," says Richard Hall, the archaeologist who led the excavation.
A Viking museum was built over the site in 1984. Visitors travel in a "time car" that takes them past various Viking scenes, and many of them -- such as the butcher, fishmonger and latrine -- have appropriate odors supplied by Mr. Knight. It's a "glorious smell-o-rama" says Mr. Hall.
Mr. Knight's biggest seller is something called flatulence. He won't venture near it without donning a white coat and latex gloves. But it added grim realism to an exhibit on trench warfare at London's Imperial War Museum. 成功的气味未必好闻
两年前，斯德哥尔摩市博物馆 (City Museum of Stockholm) 联系到弗兰克?奈特 (Frank Knight) ，提出一个奇怪的请求：问他能否复制出古埃及木乃伊的特殊气味。
奈特只是气味行业内的小经营者，并没有第一手的资料。因此，他在国际互联网上进行了查询，结果确定了一些古埃及人很可能在制作木乃伊的时候涂抹的防腐剂和香料。随后，奈特将它们混合，并搀入其他一些气味，最终制成了一种相当难闻的味道。
奈特说，那是一种相当怪异的气味，他的妻子对它非常讨厌。奈特拥有一家小公司，专门生产有特殊名称的怪异气味。斯德哥尔摩市博物馆的馆长却表示，尽管这种气味令人生厌，但它对与古代医药相关的一次展览却很有用。
目前，对怪异气味的需求正在增长。一些零售商店、博物馆和展览馆等地方都开始使用各种气味，为他们的展品增加真实的气息。
英国一家旅行社 Lunn Poly 就在自己的几处店面里使用了电子气味散发器，散发出由奈特设计的椰子芳香。 Lunn Poly 的发言人表示，这种办法对顾客立刻就能生效，因为这让他们联想起热带风光和防晒霜。
纽约一家大型香料和气味供应商 International Flavors & Fragrances 正在研制陨星的味道和人体的体味，以及其他一些气味，用于即将开幕的纽约科学馆 (New York Hall of Science) 的外星生命展。佛罗里达州奥兰多一家名为 Florida Hospital Celebration Health 的医院在其 X 光和影像科使用了椰子香，试图制造一种“海滩风情”。据医院称，这个诱人的创举使得取消预约的情况有所减少。
奈特制造的怪味没有标准的化学配方，比如他在网上销售的“运动员更衣室”气味，以及“龙的呼吸”气味。和这个行业中其他的制作者一样，奈特采取的也是一种“撞大运”的方法，首先确定出主要的气味，然后找到与之相配的化学试剂，接著用各种各样的添加试剂不断进行实验，直到他觉得已经达到了满意的效果。
位于英格兰牛津郡的 Aroma Co. 的董事总经理西蒙?哈洛普 (Simon Harrop) 表示，气味制造有一部份属于科学，有一部份属于艺术。这家公司为英国汽车制造商 Vauxhall 生产一种“新车味道”，供 Vauxhall 在其销售的一些二手车上使用。 Aroma Co. 的其他产品还有：“人造大麻气味”，这是为电影…两只大烟枪” (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) 放映后的一个晚会制做的；“人牲祭品”气味，用于一个与俄狄普斯有关的戏剧作品。
位于加州圣巴巴拉的 ScentAir Technologies 则制造“机油”、“热带雨林”等气味。它生产的“邪恶的棉花糖”闻上去有一点莳萝腌黄瓜的味道。公司业务主管帕梅拉?诺克 (Pamela Knock) 表示，那正是邪恶的味道。这种气味去年被用于位于佛罗里达州娱乐中心 Universal Orlando Resort 的一间鬼屋里。
在研究邪恶的气味方面，很少有人像 58 岁的奈特那么深入，尽管他在化学和香料学方面没有受过什么训练。他的公司 Dale Air 业务只有中等规模，他负责发明气味，由他的妻子和一位同事来打理业务。公司多数业务都是通过人们口口相传而得到的，所以营销方面的工作几乎用不到。 Dale Air 储备的气味大约有 300 多种。奈特不愿意透露收益状况。公司多数产品的售价为每升 160 美元左右，某些难以配制的气味可能价格会更高，比如为示巴女王展配制的乳香售价大约为 380 美元。
几周前，一家英国的动物园和一位艺术家分别请求奈特配制尸体的气味。在通过互联网进行了又一次搜索后，奈特发现与腐败尸体的气味相关的关键化学物质是丁二胺 (diaminobutane) 。于是，他订购了一些丁二胺，并在名为二丙二醇 (dipropylene glycol) 的溶剂中进行了稀释，但由此配制出的绿色液体闻起来并不很像腐败尸体的气味，至少在他看来不像。所以，奈特继续进行改善。
在一个专门的法医网站上，奈特了解到腐败的尸体通常会散发出硫磺气体。奈特深信自己已经找到了缺失的成份，于是他从一个标著“腐烂的鸡蛋”的烧瓶中取出几滴加入其中，然后退后几步，仔细地闻。屋里充满了臭气，但奈特仍不满意。“这个气味还是不对”，他叹了一口气说，“看来我不得不到太平间走一趟，闻闻腐败的尸体究竟是怎样的气味。”
奈特的实验室只有一间房间，里面放置著各类烧杯、护目镜和一台瓶子封口机，其中一面墙上放满了存放各种气味的铝制烧瓶。多数试剂是液体，放在电动气味散发器上加热后，都能慢慢地发出各自的气味。“哈瓦那雪茄”是怪异的甜味，而“铁融化”气味闻上去则像是生锈的管子。
奈特对他的大部份配方守口如瓶。他表示，这就像可口可乐公司 (Coca-Cola) 为自己的饮料配方保密一样。
奈特曾经做过人寿保险推销员和出租车司机。他在为 Dale Air 的前老板弗雷德?戴尔 (Fred Dale) 销售了一段时间的空气清新剂之后进入现在的行业。弗雷德?戴尔今年早些时候过世，他只是把配制特殊气味当作副业。戴尔的第一批客户是医生，他们利用“奶奶的厨房”、“煤炭的炉火”等气味帮助英国护理院中的老年痴呆症患者恢复记忆。奈特在 1999 年收购了 Dale Air ，并扩展了各种主题气味的业务。
Dale Air 的一个长期客户是位于英国约克郡的 Jorvik Viking Center ，该中心坐落在 70 年代挖掘出土的 10 世纪古斯堪的纳维亚人居住点之上。
1984 年，这里建了一个博物馆，游客可以乘坐“时间列车”穿梭在各种古斯堪的纳维亚人的生活景点之中，这些景点散发出的气味都是出自奈特之手。
奈特最畅销的产品称作“胃肠涨气”。没有白色外套和橡胶手套的保护，连他自己都不愿意走近这种试剂。但它却为伦敦皇家军事博物馆 (Imperial War Museum) 的堑壕战展览增加了真实的残酷气息。
