Perfume is an invisible art. It enters a room, passes by someone and leaves a trace, yet it cannot be held. Sculpture is the opposite: it takes up space, it can be touched, it carries light and shadow. Puzzle Parfum was born where these two worlds meet.
An artist’s journey into scent
Tahir Cengiz Yatağan has been making paintings and sculpture in his studio in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, since 2012. In his own words, he came to feel that sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell all feed creativity, and that of these senses smell is the one that touches memory most. The search he had poured into his paintings and sculptures moved into, and onto, a bottle.
“When I found the scattered pieces of the puzzle and put them in place, I realised the whole that appeared was the result of patience.” — Tahir Cengiz Yatağan
A bottle shaped like a puzzle piece
The Puzzle bottle takes the form of a three-dimensional jigsaw piece. The shape carries the brand’s core idea: life is a puzzle, and each of us is looking for our missing piece. The surface of every bottle bears a pattern evolved from the artist’s own paintings and multiplied through mirror symmetry. From the oranges and browns of Lal to the lilacs and greens of Sarcastic, each fragrance has its own artwork.
The fragrance ends, the artwork remains
An ordinary perfume bottle loses its purpose with the last drop. Puzzle bottles were designed as art objects that live on after the fragrance is gone. As the artist puts it, when your perfume is finished you can let these bottles speak to your eye and your soul instead of throwing them away. The bottle on your shelf becomes a small sculpture that carries the memory of the scent into the room.
Parts of a whole
The approach goes beyond the bottle. The names of the perfumes were hand-lettered in calligraphy suited to the whole. The black magnetic box, too, lets the object be received as a work of art. Scent, form and lettering work together like three languages for the same idea.
Explore the Puzzle Eau de Parfum collection · Read next: From fragrance to sculpture: the Puzzle bottle
