About

Join a perfume workshop at 4160Tuesdays’ studio in Hammersmith, a former Victorian builders’ yard. Unusually for 21st-century perfume, this is home to every stage of the fragrance creation: concept, trials, compounding every batch, maturing, blending in organic grain ethanol, maceration, filtering, bottling, packing and writing notes to customers.

4160Tuesdays’ style is to make fragrances the way it was done during the first decades of the early 20th century, perfume’s golden age, when London had around 120 independent perfume makers. They use traditional methods (complying with modern safety regulations), make small batches of 5–20 litres, and bottle fragrances to order.

As they’re small they can be nimble, so despite their size, 4160Tuesdays has made small batches of perfume for Google, Samsung, Hyundai and Hendrick’s, and recently made the room fragrance for Craft Irish Whiskey’s Devil’s Keep. Three of their fragrances – Maxed Out, Midnight in the Palace Garden and Mother Nature’s Naughty Daughters – were shortlisted for the Fragrance Foundation Awards. They’ve won EauMG’s fragrance house of the year and Sarah has been named ÇaFleureBon’s Hardest Working Perfumer twice.

Before taking up perfume making, Sarah was a writer and worked for 14 years with Lush Handmade Cosmetics, learning to describe fragrances and materials evocatively, and to tell their stories. Her aim was to write a novel about a problem-solving perfumer, but she was diverted into making her own scent instead. In 2021 her book, co-written with fragrance writer Samantha Scriven, The Perfume Companion, was published by Frances Lincoln. Currently she is writing a perfume-making book for her students.

As an almost self-taught perfumer who learned her craft outside the usual industry routes, Sarah enjoys sharing everything she has learned with other perfume makers who want to start in a small way. She was teaching regular classes at the workshop, then moved to Zoom in 2020. Classes are now limited to six people in the studio, with additional places online.

If you would like to take part in a workshop by Zoom, 4160Tuesdays can send you a materials kit. Please email them via perfume@4160Tuesdays.com.