Three films about how R Parfums bottles are made and the room where people come to smell them. Series #1 follows the brass of the Patina bottle; Series #2, our first showroom; Series #3, Ceramic and fire, a ceramic cap from wet clay to the kiln. Five clips from 2022 follow, one for each scent the house had then.
Each series follows one material. Brass first, then the house, then clay.
Series #1 · Brass
The Patina Bottle
The film follows brass, the material that has carried the R Parfums signature since the first day. Three pieces of it sit on each Patina bottle. One keeps its brass, one has turned fully to patina, and one is caught midway.
In April 2022 it was still a house in a quiet part of Thảo Điền. By July it had opened as our showroom. 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu, An Khánh Ward, is where R Parfums began; today there are three houses in Ho Chi Minh City.
In the film: the house as it was, 20 April 2022; the first walls down the next day; building work in June, with signs going up inside, a curved staircase, brass lights; the arched front, finished; the garden and the R; linen beneath the ceiling, glass bells, Patina bottles; last, the R Parfums sign among the leaves.
34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu, April 2022 → the showroom opens, July 2022
Shot in the ceramic studio where the caps are made · silent.
Series #3 · Clay · New
Ceramic and fire
The cap of the Ceramic bottle begins as wet clay and ends as a fired sphere, its glaze recalling the ceramics of Chu Đậu. The glaze goes on pink; the kiln decides the rest. The colour shifts from one firing to the next, and again with the light.
On the finished bottle, the cap carries a tassel and a ceramic charm engraved with R. The kiln decides the glaze and the maker’s hand the tassel, so each Ceramic bottle comes to you as it was finished.
The vertical cut keeps seven moments: pouring, lifting the cast, trimming, drying, the pink glaze, the kiln, the mark.
Why film
A perfume opens on skin in hours. The brass on a Patina bottle keeps a slower time. The first clock you can smell; the second you can only watch.
Clay is different. It changes once, in the kiln, and keeps that fire on its surface. So the camera stays close to the metal and the clay, and to the rooms where people come to smell.
Short clips · Filmed in 2022
Five scents, one clip each
One for each scent the house had then, each in its Patina bottle. Shadow Éclat came later and has no clip yet. The clips loop with the sound off; turn the sound on in any player.
I
Eau de Hajime
Like a first affection
Chypre Floral · Pear, Rose, Narcissus
the bottle on pale stone; ripe pears; a hand holding the bottle against a cream wall; last, the bottle set down among halved pears and white blossom.
the bottle on a wet black surface as water falls and splashes; the brass plate and its green patina up close; last, two hands holding the bottle against the dark.
pink rose petals in the dark and a drift of smoke; the bottle lying on the petals; last, the bottle beside a rose as the smoke rises. Lit low, on purpose.
the bottle lying in a bed of brown seeds; upright on driftwood and stone; close on the glass and the green patina of its plate; last, the whole bottle on driftwood.
On YouTube; the link on this page opens it in a new tab. The film follows brass, the material that has carried the R Parfums signature since the first day, and the three hand-finished pieces that sit on each Patina bottle.
What does Ceramic and fire show?
Ceramic and fire (1:29, silent) follows a Ceramic cap from wet clay to the finished bottle: cast in moulds, trimmed at the mouth and sponged smooth, left to dry, glazed pink, fired at 1000°C, then fitted with its tassel and a ceramic charm engraved with R. A shorter vertical cut, 0:27, is made for phones.
Will my Patina bottle look like the one in the film?
Not exactly. Every plate is made the same way, three pieces of brass corroded, filed and polished by hand, but the pattern never falls the same way twice. Each plate is one of a kind, made for one owner.
Do the ceramic caps come out the same colour every time?
No. The colour of the glaze shifts with the light and from one firing to the next. Caps are not made to order: each bottle comes as the kiln and the maker’s hand left it.
Where can I see the bottles from the films?
At any of our three houses in Ho Chi Minh City, open every day, each with all six scents to try on skin: R Space, 34 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu; 42 Nguyễn Huệ, The Café Apartment building, Level 2, inside NOTE – The Scent Lab; and 26 Lý Tự Trọng, Level 3, inside Saigon Scent Lab. Ceramic arrives at the houses in late November.
Brass, clay, skin: three places where time leaves its fingerprints.
Glass rain, from the Pluviophile exhibitions.
After the screening
Archive
The exhibitions, 2024 to 2026: Pluviophile, Letters from 221B Baker Street, Light and Shadow in Hanoi, Pluviophile – Chapter 2.
