Are you one of those people who loves the smell of old books (I admit, I am)? Then, like me, you will probably love this ongoing performance work by artist Rachael Morrison who is dutifully smelling each book in the vast MoMA collection (approx. 300,000, in fact), in addition to keeping a detailed log of each book sniffed.
As you can well imagine, the librarian in me loves the whole idea of this project. Possibly my favourite part? Her detailed chart (above) chronicling the specific parfum of each tome. My favourites among her name choices for odours sniffed include: "Hugging an elderly relative", "late summer rain" and "old wooden furniture."
Check out more details on "Smelling the Books" (as well as her other projects) here.

Such an odd yet totally awesome idea.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! haha! I love this so much!
ReplyDeletexo Ashley
Such a fun, totally random idea!
ReplyDeleteThe smell of old books. Sigh. I love that smell (^.^)
ReplyDeletesending you happy spells
amyflyingakite.com
now THAT is a dedicated project... made me chuckle!
ReplyDeleteHooray for statistics and pie charts!
ReplyDeleteThis is so awesome! I don't know if I have ever paid attention...I do notice the smell of my magazines though. (Probably because of the perfume samples! Duh!)
ReplyDeleteAmy
Oh my God Wow!
ReplyDeleteI do love books but I'm not sure I can smell more than ten of them at a time! =)
This is one great endeavour!
oxo
ML
Twenty York Street
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