A perfume paradise has arrived.

While one might expect it to smell of moth balls and wicker behind the Port Townsend Antique Mall, noses in the know have discovered an oasis in The Olfactory House.

Owners Laurajean Lewis and Erica Messenger opened the doors to their new perfumery Sept. 10 and have since been spreading sensible scents.

The degree of thoughtfulness these two bring to their fragrances is breathtaking.

“I feel like we’re pretty unique in the fact that we’re not just a retail perfumery, we’re manufacturing,” Messenger said. “That’s why we call ourselves a house, and then wanting to really capture the entire supply chance from seed to scent, that’s our goal.”

Lewis does the growing and distilling for many of their oils and absolutes on her property on Marrowstone Island and then hands them off to Lewis, who uses her probing proboscis to take the scents sky high by crafting unique blends.

Both women trace their early aromatic amatory to their matriarchal lineages.

“Our grandmothers both sort of introduced us to scent. My grandmother always smelled so good and I didn’t know why, but when we’d go over to her house she’d always have lemon verbena candles and she had dried eucalyptus everywhere,” Messenger said.

At one point, Messenger got a job in a salon and was introduced to essential oils.

“Eventually I just didn’t want to wear regular perfume anymore. It was too strong,” she said. “I started to just play around and then I caught the fever and I just started taking courses from people in Europe and worked in large perfume houses; big commercial perfume houses.”

Lewis’ passion is at least as extensive.

“When I went to college 30 years ago, I went in and told my advisor I wanted to be a grower for the perfume industry,” she said.

This passion truly took hold when, as a teenager, Lewis traveled to France with her grandmother.

“She had gone to go wine tasting and had to figure out how to occupy a 15 year old,” Lewis said. “I ended up visiting several perfumeries. We were in Grasse — which is really the heart and soul of the worldwide fragrance industry — and I got to see lavender fields and jasmine and roses being grown for the perfume industry.”

Though she had been fascinated with the whiffs of the world beforehand, that trip was an eye-opener.

“When I was in Southern France and saw that people actually had jobs related to the perfume industry beyond just spraying it at the mall, it was mind blowing,” Lewis said.

The perfume bar at The Olfactory House allows customers a chance to smell the fragrances on offer without having to fill the small space with mixed …

After their long individual journeys through odor, the pandemic, which tore so many apart, brought Lewis and Messenger together.

Lewis had spent the interim years earning a doctorate’s degree in biogeography studying crop and soil science, investigating the relationships between place and plants, which she taught for years while at the same time Messenger was working in the university system at Arizona State University.

Then fate dealt them the cards they needed when they finally met through a mutual friend.

“When we met each other last year it was magical because it was like, ‘Oh, my gosh! You’re a perfumer and I want to be a professional distiller and how can we make this work?’” Lewis said.

“She came down and she brought some of the things that she had distilled and I had a small perfume line at the time, so I had her smell that and we were just geeking out for two hours over perfume,” Messenger said.

They began working on a project together not knowing exactly where it would take them, when out of nowhere Lewis and her husband, who has long dealt in antiques, had the opportunity to purchase the Port Townsend Antique Mall. Inside, a treasure beyond the heirlooms awaited.

“This room had been used over 20 or 30 years for a gallery, a conference room, all kinds of things, and it was just a storage room. I walked into it and said, ‘I could have a perfumery here,’ and called Erica,” Lewis recalled.

“I said, ‘Oh, I guess I’m going to move to Washington,’” Messenger laughed.

While the two of them are very open, the perfume industry in general tends toward the secretive with what comes out of their labs.

“Perfumers have lost that contact with what they’re creating. I want to sort of blow the lid off of that and say we’re making perfume the way they used to make it — which is by the nose and by touch and feel and experimentation,” Messenger said.

Their plans for the space include hosting small events for up to eight people to come in and have a perfume party, crafting in depth “bespoke blends” one-on-one with Messenger, and eventually offering their knowledge to the community in the form of paid internships.

“We want to share this with not only people in our community, but anyone who wants to come and learn about perfumery,” Lewis said.

Currently, they have a line of seven house scents with three more nearing completion, which they mix into products like eau de toilettes, room sprays, and candles with a blend of non-additive soy and beeswax harvested from Lewis’ own hives.

To learn more, go to olfactoryhouse.com.