Celia Lyttelton is an art critic and scent correspondent. Her book The Scent Trail: A Journey of the Senses, a definitive account of the history of scent and a travelogue, was published by Transworld in 2007. It is Published in the U.S by Penguin and it was also published in Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea and Italy.

She has written for numerous magazines, papers and journals around the world, ranging from,Vogue, Elle Decoration, Tatler, World of Interiors, Harpers & Queen, The Spectator, the auction house magazines Bonhams and Christies, and Talk magazine to Art & Auction in the US, the Evening Standard, Telegraph, Financial Times, Western Mail, The Irish Times and Independent in the UK. She is also the UK’s first scent critic for International News. She has had her own blog on the Huffington Post and she is currently a writer for Timeless Travels and Archaeology, the Guardian, Homes and Antiques, U.K. and The World of Interiors. In 2015 she received a research grant from the Society of Authors. She is currently researching a book on a modern British artist and his circle. Celia is the author of two books on contemporary art, THE NOW ART BOOK and FLOATING WORLDS, both of which were published in Japan.

Having spent ten years writing about 'looking' (at Art) she decided to switch senses to that of smell and discover the world of perfume and combine it with her love of traveling to far flung places from the incense groves in Socotra in the Arabian Ocean to the Phoenician damasc rose fields in southern Morocco on the edge of the Sahara.

Currently, she is working with CNN on a program about Middle Eastern scents and the history of Perfume in the Levant and Asia Minor. She helping to make an archive of perfume formulas to be made into a library of all the great perfumes that have been made over the millennia which is located at Arlington House in London. She teaches courses of the art of making scent and makes bespoke scents for friends and clients from her olfactorium of rare oils and unguents.

Fees include: 

• Full board and lodging in the castle for four nights.
• Transfers to Potentino from Florence and back again
• Two sessions a day with Celia Lyttelton during which you will learn: 
  • The basic principles and about the equipment for perfume-making, getting acquainted with pipettes and blotters.
  • The seven families of perfume
  • How to unleash your own sense of smell
  • How to determine your own perfume profile 
  • How to make a scent from aromatic bases
  • How to build a pyramid of notes and familiarize yourself with the gamut of odours
  • To explore and work around specific aromatic families and their raw materials 
  • To make and blend accords and devise formulas and compose a scent and much more.
  • To use the castle's Alembic to make an essential oil from the local herbs and plants
• Wine tasting with the castle’s winemaker Charlotte Horton with a special emphasis on the articulation of taste and smell
• Each student will have an olfactorium; a box of essential oils and blends from which to experiment and make their own bespoke scents.

If you have any questions before you book, do not hesitate to email us alexander.greene@potentino.com or telephone us on +390564950643.