VERONICA HENDRY

Like a scene from a fairy tale, Veronica presides over a scented supper club. Candles glowing, the diners eat with wooden skewers dipped in and infused with carefully picked scents, each of which makes the food taste subtly different. There is no right scent to eat with a particular food – there are five main tastes but a myriad of smells, making the whole experience an open-ended adventure.

Veronica is always expanding her repertoire. She trained as a 3D designer, moving on to spatial design, bringing aroma into her work by scenting spaces – altering the experience of a room and the associations that the sense of smell vividly conjures.

She works with extracts, oils and resins, all derived from the natural world. A pipette transmits these miniscule droplets into the carrier liquid which, as it evaporates, transmits the scent into the air. There is a complex art to the blending. Every good scent should have three notes: a top note that strikes you first, a mid note that comes after, and, finally, a base note.

Veronica makes perfumes of various strengths – eau de parfum is twice as potent as eau de toilette – but as is her way, stretches what perfume can be used for. There are practical perfumes to drip onto blotters to combat moths; spatial aromas and bath scents; ways to sweeten carpets to keep them bug free; very unusual aromatic chocolates; and a series of scents inspired by songs (Perfect Day is a bestseller). And the supper clubs: the advent of food.

Food has opened up another avenue, as Veronica has just finished training as a natural chef; a combination of a chef’s techniques with a nutritionist’s knowledge of the effects of the ingredients.

Veronica is in pursuit of creating new and powerful experiences. She began with casting and model-making, went onto more ethereal light projection, and now she’s almost left the physical world behind entirely – planning to use nothing more than molecules on our taste buds and olfactory nerves to summon up entire vivid worlds.