Essence of craftsmanship
Images courtesy of Mine
by Matthew Burgos
Living in his native Naples, Massimo 'Max' Annunziata would stroll around the city and see the handcrafted designs in the tailors’ shop windows. For him, they spoke of both the owners’ skill and dedication to connecting with their communities. He wondered if he could do the same with perfumes, creating them without machinery... but with only his two hands.
He researched the art of perfume making, interviewed craftspeople, experimented with essential oils, tried, failed, tried again. In August 2017, Max capped a successful batch of bottles and opened Mine Perfume Lab’s doors in Naples to scent aficionados. Here, abstract ideas transform into unique fragrances inhabiting beautiful packaging, born from techniques redolent of care and empathy.
A poetic nature wafts from the way Max narrates the essence of Mine Perfume Lab. He describes every fragrance he makes as the fruition of his emotions, research, grit and dreams. “Every product and process of Mine Perfume Lab is made by hand—my hands—from the labels and boxes to the creation of the scents,” shares Max. “This is a story of passion, one that touches upon perfume creations that last. It is the know-how of wisdom being passed on by a parent to their child, from our hands to yours.”
Three features mark the artisanal quality of Max’s perfumery: the process, the scents, and his team. When it comes to making perfumes, Mine Perfume Lab only prepares them once the clients have placed their orders. A request arrives, and the team rifles through the essential oils, fuses their drops together, bottles up the resulting creation, and sticks their label onto the apothecary bottle. Upon request, they write dedication letters by hand to tuck inside the parcel. Once they've tied the package up with twine, black sealing wax is melted over the box and imprinted with their stamp.
On the brand’s Instagram account, the scents seem to encapsulate the emotions that Max feels when he blends the fragrances. For instance, the brand describes Incenso as “magnetic and unpredictable, intense and charismatic, pungent and mystical, drawn from the mix of citrus, incense, wood, musk, and vanilla”. The complexity of Brise D’Agadir makes its scent sensual, refined, and brimming with contrasts as notes of bergamot, pink pepper, and grapefruit clash and complement the nuances of nutmeg, paprika, saffron, cinnamon and red fruit.
Behind these fragrances and processes, Mine Perfume Lab is backed by its people. Team members introduce themselves not only by their role, but also by their height, eye colour, hair type, zodiac sign, strengths and flaws. In just two examples Max himself is a generous but thin-skinned Aquarius, while Angelo, the content and social media manager, is a hardworking but oversensitive Sagittarius. Minding this variety of personalities is Mimi the in-house dachshund, a calm presence who occupies all the seats in the shop. Amidst their differences, Mine Perfume Lab prospers as a collective.
Max believes that buying perfume is the gateway to a new experience. For him, it is laced with a vision of beauty and a pursuit of innate value. “The meaning of beauty is giving value to people and objects because, for me, it saves and resurrects the world. But it can save us only if we save it first; if we recognise, protect, tweak it to our benefit, and, above, all, seek it every day, especially in small things.” And it is through their unwavering dedication to the beauty of small things that Mine Perfume Lab succeeds so well.