From raw materials to perfume bottles; 4160Tuesdays at London Craft Week

London Craft Week returns on 12th–18th May 2025, a city-wide festival where makers open their doors, share their skills, and show how things are really made. Unlike regular fairs and exhibitions, where you see the finished product in all its glory, this is about craftsmanship in action, and we’re part of it again.

What makes it interesting is the chance to go beyond the finished piece, to see the decisions, the challenges, and the expertise that bring it to life.

4160Tuesdays at London Craft Week 2025

London Craft Week is a great fit for 4160Tuesdays because it lets people see what handmade really means. That’s why we’ve chosen to get involved again. Here’s what we’ll be doing:

An Introduction to Sustainable Scents Workshop

Sarah will be running sustainable scent making masterclasses at our studio in Hammersmith on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday - two-hour sessions exploring innovative and renewable perfumery materials. Visitors will have a chance to smell some of Sarah’s most interesting materials and leave with a refillable 15ml French glass bottle of their own perfume.

In these workshops, we’ll be working with upcycled materials and learning how producers are using new methods of extraction and waste upcycling. It’s often assumed that ‘natural’ automatically means ‘better,’ but the reality is more complicated, and we’ll go into that.

Visit the 4160Tuesdays Studio

Our studio will also be open from 12pm to 6:30pm, Monday to Friday, for anyone who fancies a visit. Come in, be shown around and invited to have a sniff. Test your nose on some of our more unusual materials. If you’d like to pop by, do send us an email to let us know you’re coming.

Barnes Fragrance Fair

Then, on Saturday 17th May, we’ll be back at the Barnes Fragrance Fair, where Sarah will be running more sustainable scent workshops, while the rest of the team exhibits a selection of our scents - including favourites like Hammersmith Tea & Biscuits and The Sexiest Scent on the Planet Ever (IMHO), along with a couple of new fragrances: Barnes 7 Afterparty and Vianne’s Confession, Sarah’s collaboration with author Joanne Harris, inspired by her latest novel, Vianne.

London Craft Week is a time for makers to show what they do and how they do it, but Barnes Fragrance Fair is a little more special for us - it’s the part that’s solely dedicated to lovers of scent.

If you’d like to join us for London Craft Week, whether for a workshop or a wander around the studio, we’d be pleased to see you.

• Future Perfumes: An Introduction to Sustainable Scents | London Craft Week
• Barnes Fragrance Fair 2025
• Email to visit our studio: [email protected]
• If you’d like to find out more about London Craft Week, visit their website and you’ll be able to see the full programme there. 

4160Tuesdays at Barnes Fragrance Fair 2025

4160Tuesdays will be heading back to Barnes Fragrance Fair on the 17th of May, and if you enjoy perfume (or just hanging out with those who do), it’s well worth a visit.

It’s not just a fair for buying bottles of fascinating scent - though you’ll find some of the UK’s most exciting independent fragrance brands there, including us! It’s a place where fragrance lovers come together to share ideas, swap stories, and, inevitably, find themselves in deep concentration, sniffing countless scent strips. No matter what you already know, you’ll meet someone interesting and discover something new.

It’s a time and a place where perfume isn’t an afterthought; it’s the main event.

What we’re up to

Start making scents - perfume making workshops with Sarah McCartney

Sarah is running two perfume making workshops, in which participants can create their own 30ml eau de parfum under her guidance. They’ll be using sustainably sourced materials to create interestingly beautiful scents that are kind to our planet.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team will be exhibiting a selection of our scents, including favourites like Hammersmith Tea & Biscuits and The Sexiest Scent on the Planet Ever (IMHO), along with a couple of exciting new fragrances. These include Barnes 7 Afterparty and Sarah’s collaboration with author Joanne Harris, Vianne’s Confession, inspired by Joanne’s new novel, Vianne.

The workshops are £60 — an absolute steal for a session with Sarah. The afternoon session has already sold out, so if you’re interested in the morning one, I recommend booking soon.

London Craft Week

Depending on when you’re reading this, if both workshops at the Barnes Fragrance Fair are sold out, you don’t have to miss out, we have more planned for London Craft Week, running from May 12th to May 18th.

• An Introduction to Sustainable Scents – Workshop

Join us for this two-hour masterclass at the 4160Tuesdays studio in Hammersmith. We’ll explore innovative renewable perfumery materials, create our own fragrances, and sample Sarah’s new perfume, made with upcycled naturals, sustainable molecules, and organic grain ethanol. You’ll also take home a refillable 15ml French glass bottle of your creation.

• Visit the 4160Tuesdays Studio

Our studio will be open from 12pm to 6:30pm, Monday 12th to Friday 16th May. Come explore our collection, experience rare perfumery materials, and try our Japanese AI machine. Interested in visiting? Just drop us an email!

Talks, walks and songs

Back to the Barnes Fragrance Fair. In addition to the main hub exhibition area and the workshops, there are walks, talks and even a scents and songs experience. 

Here are a few things that sound particularly interesting: 

• Scents and Songs (9:30 AM) – Haydn Williams and Roger Miles pair iconic songs recorded at The Olympic Studios with fragrances, exploring how music and scent heighten each other.
• Barnes Fragrance Fair Roundup (11:00 AM) – Alice du Parcq and Suzy Nightingale share their top Spring/Summer picks from the fair and their best shopping tips.
• Men Smell! (2:00 PM) – Haydn Williams hosts a panel discussion alongside other special guests on what fragrance means to men and boys in 2025.
• A Life in Scent (4:00 PM) – Sali Hughes chats with Alice du Parcq about the perfumes that have shaped her life.

Come and say hello

We’ll be there all day, chatting, spritzing, and generally making sure everyone leaves our stand or workshop smiling and smelling wonderful. Come find us for a sniff and a natter!

Here are some of the main details you need if you want to join us at Barnes Fragrance Fair 2025:

• Date: Saturday, 17th May 2025
• Entry: Free (but workshops and talks cost and you must book in advance)
• Location: Barnes, London
• Main Hub - All fragrance Brands - Barnes Green Centre, The Green, Barnes - London, SW13 9HE
• Talks and workshops - Barnes Methodist Church, Station Road, Barnes London, SW13 0NH
• Talks - Olympic Studios, Church Road, Barnes London, SW13 9HL

Find out more on the Barnes Fragrance Fair 2025 website. 

Book tickets to join one of Sarah’s workshops

Here’s where you’ll find more info on what we’re doing during London Craft Week. 

We hope to see you there! 

Sinead and 4160Tuesdays team

What are captives in perfumery? Do perfumers really need them?

I made a film on YouTube about captives in perfumery; here’s the written version for those who’d rather read, or are on the bus and forgot their headphones.

When I think of a captive, I imagine someone in a stone tower letting down their hair, like Rapunzel. Perfumery captives are a little different. They never let their hair down.

Why and how are captives used in perfumery?

There's a lot of fuss in perfumery about brand-new molecules. They are called captives as they are only available to the companies that invented and patented them. Their marketing teams love to shout about how groundbreaking they are and how you absolutely must have them to create modern perfumes. Except we managed just fine before they existed, didn’t we?

A captive is a molecule created and patented by a big fragrance company. You can’t patent an actual perfume, but you can patent the process that produces a specific aroma chemical, making it exclusive. Sometimes, these companies sell their captives to other perfume houses immediately, making more money from licensing than from using them in their own scents. 

More often though, they hold onto them, hoping the captive will feature in a smash-hit fragrance; one so successful that other brands will have to come knocking, desperate to include the same trendy molecule in their own creations. That’s how captives drive perfume trends.

Do we need to use captives when making perfume?

Do you need the latest captives to make perfume? No. If you can’t get hold of a captive, you do what perfumers have always done: work with what’s available and create something original. The idea that you must have the latest molecule is just marketing hype.

That said, captives do sometimes become available, often hidden inside “bases” - blends of materials that big fragrance houses sell to perfumers. Take Dreamwood, for example, it’s still a captive, but we can all buy Dreamwood Base, which contains  the captive molecule along with a few extras.

We use Dreamwood base in our North sea shore on a cold day fragrance, Saltburn Driftwood.

Some perfumers get serious FOMO over captives, but chasing them won’t necessarily make your perfume better or more original. And when they finally get released? Half the time, you smell them and think, Oh. Is that it?

If you can’t get the captive you’re after, don’t panic. Just make something new. After all, that’s what perfumery is all about.

If you’d like to know more: 

Watch our YouTube video about captives here: HELD CAPTIVE! What are captives and why can't we have them?

If you want to learn to make original perfumes with me (but without captives) you can join Scenthusiasm on Patreon, a global community for people fascinated by fragrance. If you want to get stuck in on your own, you can follow my online self-study course Scenthusiasm School.

What shall we celebrate this February?

You’ve got rather a lot to choose from. There was World Wetlands Day on the 2nd, Oatmeal Monday on the 10th or you might even enjoy International I Hate Coriander Day on the 24th.

Every day there’s something to celebrate, if you’re that way inclined. This month, the one with the most puff is probably the saint’s day which falls on the 14th.

I get the concept of, let’s say, National Otter Day. As lovely as they are, otters don’t play a huge role in most of our daily lives so it seems reasonable we’d only celebrate them once a year. Whereas Valentine's Day is about celebrating love, traditionally the romantic type. Now IMHO, it’s a crying shame if we need a day each year to remind us of this.

However, as it happens, there are a lot of people who associate the gift of a bottle of perfume with Valentine’s Day, which isn’t entirely surprising. So I thought, why fight it, especially when we have something that might fit the occasion quite nicely, in a unique way. I’ll get to that soon.

A bottle of perfume isn’t just for Valentine’s Day

Maybe you’re not especially interested in celebrating Valentine’s Day, that’s fine, the 13th of February is Galentine’s Day, the 15th is Singles Awareness Day and there’s National Love Your Pet Day on the 20th. So whatever love you want to celebrate this February, and hopefully the rest of the year, knock yourself out, I say. 

If you think a bottle of perfume will help you show love to a friend, a partner or even yourself (sorry we don’t have any gifts for National Love Your Pet Day) then we’ve got a bottle on our shelves that celebrates love in its truest form. 

Tempest Rose from House of Burlesque X 4160Tuesdays

We’ve never had a fragrance that fits the season of love like this one does. It’s powerful, sassy and unapologetic. It’s got a heart-shaped sequin tassel attached to the bottle for twirling or admiring. 

This fragrance is a collaboration between 4160Tuesdays and Tempest Rose from House of Burlesque, bringing an empowering combination of citrus fruits, rich roses, jasmine and iris.

Celebrate yourself for a change

If you’re not sure who to give this fragrance to, stuff Valentine’s Day, keep it! It’s Tempest Rose the ultimate burlesque in a bottle. A celebration of confidence, empowerment, and pure entertainment.

Burlesque, and this fragrance, is about being you. The biggest, best and most fearless version of you. So, if you want it, certainly don’t sit around and wait for someone else to buy it for you, that’s not the idea at all.

Written by: Sinead O’Carroll - Team Tuesdays