| The Smell of a Book Binding Perfumer Lila Georges reverse-engineers the scent of a 1926 calfskin spine: notes of vanillin, cellulose rot, and iron gall ink.
Issue 07: “The Tension of Touch” Spring/Summer 2026 | $35 USD pao collection magazine
EDITOR’S LETTER On the Virtue of Resistance | The Smell of a Book Binding Perfumer
In a Copenhagen loft, curator Elin Moos owns a Finn Juhl, a Børge Mogensen, and an anonymous 18th-century farmer’s stool. She refuses to own a sofa. “A catalog is a graveyard of desire,” she tells us. Her philosophy: Acquisition must be followed by a three-month “quarantine” during which the object is used daily, then rejected or kept based on wear alone. We photograph the stool’s saddle—dipped four centimeters by 270 years of a single family’s weight. *Towels, terry, and the Japanese tenugui . By Maya Indigo “A catalog is a graveyard of desire,” she tells us
— Solenne K. Aoyama , Editor-in-Chief The Language of Surfaces