Parfums composés à Grasse · depuis MCMLXXXVII

# Light, held
in shadow

Three eaux. One nose. Small numbered editions,
composed above the old lavender exchange.

Descendre ↓
I

## La Maison

Founded 1987 · Independent since

Maison Ambre began in a single rented room above the old lavender exchange in Grasse, with a copper still, a north-facing window, and the conviction that a perfume should behave like dusk: arriving slowly, and leaving something behind.

We have grown carefully since: one atelier, three eaux, and editions small enough to number in pencil. We do not launch by season. A composition joins the house when it is finished, which has happened eleven times in thirty-nine years, and been reversed eight.

What remains of each attempt is kept in the archive, four hundred amber vials we call la mémoire. Visitors may smell them. Nothing in the archive is for sale, which is precisely why it matters.

Editions composed
  XI
Kept in the collection
  III
Materials in the organ
  412
Rooms in the atelier
  IV

II

## Les Trois Eaux

The collection entire; nothing else is made

Faites glisser ⟶

I

### Ambre Premier

Eau de parfum · 100 ml

The house signature. Amber warmed slowly, the way a room holds the last hour of sun.

Tête
  Bergamot, pink pepper
Cœur
  Labdanum, rose de mai
Fond
  Amber accord, vanilla, cedar

€210

II

### Fumée Noire

Eau de parfum · 75 ml

Smoke without fire. Black tea poured in a cold chapel; leather gloves left on the pew.

Tête
  Black tea, cade wood
Cœur
  Iris root, suede accord
Fond
  Birch tar, tonka bean

€185

III

### Voyage d’Or

Parfum de voyage · 3 × 10 ml

The bright one. Citrus at altitude, honeyed blossom below, made to be refilled, never finished.

Tête
  Yuzu, néroli
Cœur
  Orange blossom, acacia honey
Fond
  Blond woods, white musk

€95

## Les Matières

Bought from growers we can name, in quantities they can bear.

Labdanum
  Crete · resin, sun-split
Vanilla
  Madagascar · pod, cured 9 months
Iris
  Tuscany · rhizome, aged 3 years
Rose de mai
  Grasse · picked before seven
Cedar
  Atlas · heartwood only
Yuzu
  Shikoku · cold-pressed peel

La mémoireFour hundred amber vials, kept and never sold

III

## Le Nez

Hélène Verdier · perfumer since 1994

Hélène Verdier · atelier, Grasse

> “A perfume is finished when removing one material ruins it, and not one moment before. Most of my work is removal.”

Hélène Verdier trained beside her grandmother’s copper still and spent a decade matching lost scents for the great houses before Maison Ambre gave her the one thing the great houses could not: time. She has composed every edition since 1994, declines all briefs, and keeps office hours only for the archive.

Her rule for the house is unchanged in three decades: one nose, no committees, no focus groups. A perfume is an opinion, not a poll.

IV

## L’Atelier

Four movements, forty days

The organ, photographed at closing. 412 materials, one chair.

1. I

   ### Composition

   Hélène works at the organ each morning between eight and eleven, when her nose is honest. A formula may hold forty materials; most are dismissed by the tenth day.

2. II

   ### Macération

   The concentrate rests in alcohol for forty days in the dark, at cellar temperature. Nothing is hurried; the materials must agree with each other before we bottle them.

3. III

   ### Glaçage

   Chilled, filtered once through paper, never twice. A perfume over-polished loses its shadow, so we keep a little of the dusk in every flacon.

4. IV

   ### Numérotation

   Each edition is bottled by hand and numbered in pencil: batch, day, flacon. Edition sizes are small enough that we remember the weather when we made them.

V

## Stockists & Visites

Found in few places, on purpose

### Grasse

Maison Ambre · Atelier

7 rue du Miel Doré

Tue – Sat · 10h – 18h

Private visits by appointment

### Paris

Comptoir de la Brume

14 passage des Orfèvres

Mon – Sat · 11h – 19h

Full collection & engraving

### Kyoto

Salon Hakuro

2-9 Kagerō-dōri, Higashiyama

Thu – Mon · 12h – 18h

Eaux I and II only

The atelier receives twelve visitors a week, in pairs, for the archive and a reading of the three eaux. Write to visites@maison-ambre.example; allow us a fortnight to reply; we are few.