Silver, steel and quartz become olfactory experiences in Georg Jensen’s home fragrance debut

Georg Jensen launches Home Scent, its fragrance debut inspired by the Danish company's history and silversmith traditions. Based on a series of sculptural scented candles, the collection celebrates the company's key materials of silver, steel and quartz.

Home Scent: Georg Jensen's fragrance debut

'When we were thinking about developing scented objects, of course we could have gone down the route of a vessel, and that would have been natural,’ explains creative director Paula Gerbase to Wallpaper* contributing editor Nick Vinson, who attended the Copenhagen launch. 'But the more time I spent in the smithy, it became so clear that actually the tools and moulds that are anonymous in the background were so integral to the process and so beautiful in themselves, almost as sculptures.'

The candles are cast from original tools from the Georg Jensen atelier, with shapes including a cube in two sizes (originating from a pressing tool), and a cone with a flat top (a spinning tool).

'We are honouring the process: I always feel like Georg Jensen is material first, so anything that we do is really about bringing the material that we work with to light. And we also deliberately left the wax of the candle very natural, almost unfinished.'

The trio of scents represents different facets of the company's work, taking us behind the scenes of its history and craft. While Georg Jensen is known for its silver work, materials like steel and quartz are less easily identified as key to the company's oeuvre. Steel, Gerbase notes, has been used by Georg Jensen since the 1940s, often to reproduce some of its iconic silver designs to make them more accessible. Quartz meanwhile has been integral to the company's work from the beginning, and also a key element in jewellery by Vivianna Torun in the 1950s. 'Georg Jensen also was always using stones with a minerality and a sense of depth and texture,' she says.

The candles' aesthetic also nods to the rough, work-in-progress feel of the atelier. 'Normally people always want pristine, but actually, the thing that I find incredibly beautiful with Georg Jensen is that they all have always celebrated imperfection and the natural expressions of materials,' Gerbase adds. 'If we're going to use wax, rather than artificially polishing it to perfection, we said, let's allow the material to breathe and to own itself in all of its marvels.'

The scents

'When I first arrived at Georg Jensen, I immediately had a multi-sensorial impression of the house,' says Gerbase. 'First, it was sound, the hammering sound that is so rhythmic. But then I had an olfactory experience of silver, of fire, of water, of steam, of something that clings to the air, and that really marked my visceral connection to the product.'

For Gerbase, the scents were about capturing the essence of the silversmithy and encapsulating all the different notes in a product and experience for the home.

Natural, locally sourced notes were used to create evocative scents that reflect each material. The silver, Gerbase explains, is represented by Danish botanicals like oak moss, ivy leaf, expressing 'a certain earthy expression that also has a moisture that hangs in the air, which is how you feel in the smithy.'

Steel, she notes, 'is very grounded', based on the sweetness of raw beetroot. For the quartz, the scent replicates 'the saltiness that hangs in the air in the coast. It's really about capturing the essence of each environment and each material.'

Georg Jensen's Home Scent is available from 15 October 2025, from EUR35