Neandertal is an artistic response to challenging the status quo and humanity’s innately egocentric view of the universe and our place in it. From the first hominids to walk on earth to our unknown future in the space era, Neandertal explores fundamental existential questions like, “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we going?” by attempting to understand the human experience from outside ourselves.
As a first step in this exploration, artist and founder Kentaro Yamada created Neandertal perfume as a way to explore the analogies between the lingering echoes of our past and that of olfactory resonance. The results are contemporary, highly original, and experimental fragrance structures, free from conventional and traditional perfumery standards.
It is believed that Neandertals lived in Eurasia for over 450,000 years, nearly 5 times longer than Homo Sapiens. Recent scientific discoveries have also revealed that Neandertals were sophisticated beings who mastered language, used fire, and created cave art well before our own arrival in the region. However, 50,000 years after we settled alongside them, Neandertals had all but disappeared, leaving much speculation about their ultimate demise.
This pair of fragrances take us on an olfactory journey deep into humanity’s past giving voice to a lost civilisation whose DNA lives on today only through ourselves, while also celebrating the future they were never able to see.
The unique shape of our bottles are based on a series of flint knapped hand axes from Norfolk in the United Kingdom. Stone tools like these have been used by mankind for over a million years and are one of our oldest and most ubiquitous design objects.
Neandertal stoneware bottles are slip cast using these flint knapped hand axes, then fired and vitrified at over 1400 °C in the kiln. Neandertal glass bottles are created using state-of-the-art laser 3D scanning and printing technology.
Each of our 90ml stoneware bottles is uniquely numbered digitally using an NFC chip to ensure its provenance. Scan your bottle using the Neandertal App on iPhone or any NFC-enabled Android device to see more information.
As a pair, Neandertal dark and light speak to the impermanence of the world around us; the rise and fall of different species, cultures and civilisations. They are also a reminder that our day to day experience of time, space and history is limited to our own human-centric experience of the world around us.
