Conversation 8: Dom, Owner of Haeckels, No. 18, CT9 1RX

8 white letters

Dropped blinds

In its distinctive monochrome, freshly painted with dropped blinds, it questioned the paint chipped, sea battered strip that lingered around it. 8 white letters: here, H-a-e-c-k-e-l-s stood, confronting the swashing, swishing waters that exuded their distinctive salty scent far beneath. Nothing about it said that it was open for business, that was only part of it’s allure, someone was behind this. My knocks were met by Dom, who opened the door. What lay behind him was his exploration of the sea that swished many metres below his feet. A retreat of sorts, the transportation from the scarped drop and Margate’s unmitigated elements was instantaneous. It wasn’t a space to avoid them, but a space to spread them out and weigh them up. Ahead, a candle burned beneath a bulbous distilling flask, held in levitation by conventional means: clamp, retort stand. Hours of quiet, conscientious tinkering had already passed within his laboratory.

Conventional measures

The door shut and the blinds remained dropped. Dom didn’t need to look at the watery expanse; the brown tinted bottles lining shelves upon the walls bottled it, the steam distilling machine at the back of the shop worked, in its magical way, to decipher it. Haeckels captures, perfumes and celebrates the seaside scents that avoid the postcard snaps but are part of the picture all the same. And, Dom Bridges is the bearded, unassuming genius behind it. We began with a discussion of the process. Dom started out with a dutiful description about how the machine, seemingly motionless in the back of his shop worked; “the machinery is like age old - it’s just a steam distilling machine - it has a container at the bottom which has boiling water in it, above that is what’s called the biomass…” Natural ingredients, which Dom collects from Margate’s shores are left to sweat over the boiling water. The water and oil that they produce contract, disguising themselves as steam, which gives the ingredients means to travel. Up a system of pipes, then down again, shocked back into separation by a burst of cold water, they become floral water and essential oil. In scientific terms, it’s simply condensation: “so, there’s about this much oil, sitting on about this much floral water” , Dom measured ‘this much’, ‘this much’ with hands that parenthesised the two products that the process had created. It seemed that the steps behind the making were completely customary, and for good reason too: “that’s what perfumists’ have used for years.” Knowledgeable, he gave a nod towards the shift in the perfume industry and the pressure to cut costs by using manufactured scents. Aspirational, he spoke of the potential to create something completely unique by using natural ingredients: “what you end up with is something a lot more precious - something that isn’t mass produced, and as a result, the person who buys it has a better relationship with it.” 

Unconventional captures

The entire process seemed to be a series of subtle contractions moving between a larger expanse. Of course, the connection to the coastal expanse outside of the process is essential, and this expands beyond contraction: expanse, contraction, contraction, expanse.

Expanse: the sprawling coastline that greets you when you shut the door of Haeckels, this is the potential amidst which Dom forages for his ingredients.

Contraction: comes in the precision undertaken to source the ingredients that distill the expansive coastal vision into a single capture; “basically every bottle here has a GPS reference on it - that map reference will take you to an exact spot, and where you stand should smell like what’s in the bottle because all of the
ingredients were captured or gathered from that particular spot.” The entire edge, honed to a particular spot, to a particular, geographical X that marks it.

Contraction: again in an amendment of forms, from actual cliff grass, seaweed, sand, crushed seashell. Their form is refocussed so that they become personable versions of their former selves, the essence of them all in one small brown tinted bottle.

Expanse: the waft, the conversation beyond beyond the bottle invoked by the necessary presence of an individual. It was this that marks something truly understood.

Exact Mirrors

By creating exact mirrors of a particular geographical X, Dom is exploring a coastline beyond the bounds that the eye can hold by virtue of the stories and memories its ingredients encase and evoke. The crafted concentration sources them out and brings individuals to unfamiliar, or perhaps familiar spaces that, would, otherwise retreat into obscurity. He recounted a particular instance that had stuck with him in the business of scent making. His customer was a beach artist, who painted in Margate’s sand. The scent, Walpole Bay, the pungency was in the place; “He grew up here, and was always riding his bike around that area as a kid, I meant it was really interesting to see - him - be - you know - taken back to this moment, just by this smell - so that was really exciting […] He was just excited and the atomiser from the bottle - he was almost trying to get it up his nose - to be there - you know.” This was the magic, there was something in it. Transportation to an instance, in a place, at a particular time. The perfume may never have manifested in the moment, scent might not even have come into the experience, but it was resolutely part of the memory.

Seeking out the geography of X's 

From this moment in our conversation, two things came to light. Firstly, the potential of his enterprise. All of the scents that Dom could possibly create sprawled before us. He recounted the requests he’d had. A man asking for the perfume arising from a very particular type of wooden pencil. Dom, in response, literally took the pencil to pieces: “I’d take all of the pencil shavings and the carbon, everything - and just put it in the biomass and see what I could get out of it…” Then, there was last Christmas, when he’d first opened the store, he remembered aloud someone digesting his concept; “‘Oh right, so I could get my Grandad’s hat…’ in our conversation Dom gave an impromptu sniff, as though the mention of something so evocative asked that he explore his own expanse)…that stinks of pipe smoke, and we could give it to my mum for Christmas’ - I just thought that was a really beautiful thing…” The seeming infiniteness of the possibility, prompted curiosity on my part about Dom’s personal taste in scent, “do you have a list of smells that you want to create?”, I asked. The answer was expectedly wondrous; “I mean - the ultimate is - is rain - really - that’s - and obviously what we’re concentrating on there is the smell of the sea…” A smell that is at once everyone’s and no ones, potentially indiscernible, and yet here Dom was, contracting a singular element which forms the expanse of multiple scenes and encouraging us to catch a good, solid whiff.

The ultimate is - is rain - really

The second thing that struck me was how unswervingly connected Dom was to the environment around him. Scent was on close terms with the town, there was a deeper connection here, on the coast than he’d known elsewhere; “I find that people speak more about smell than anywhere else - everyone knows the smell of the sea, everyone knows when there’s something wrong with the sea -" “The putridness of seaweed when it’s washed up?”, I said, reminded of that scent of something wrong. “You don’t hear people talking about the smell of pollution in central London - it just doesn’t happen…” Ultimately, his environment wasn’t solely about the scents it bore, there was a larger implication. The view of the sea, for now, was shut out, but that didn’t mean that the precise coordinates of Haeckels weren’t paramount. “Do you think it was important for your shop to be sea-facing? Or was that a happy coincidence?”, I asked. “Uhm - no - it’s totally manufactured, I think it’s a big part - not only to be sea-facing but also to be in Cliftonville - I wanted to create a really aspirational, high-end brand in one of the most impoverished (figures wise), impoverished areas in Kent.” He had succeeded, the quality of his products and of his image spoke for themselves.

Facing up to the sea

Moreover, the expansion of his concept, interrupting and intriguing noses beyond the coordinates in which they were concocted was powerful: “the perfumes here are very much about trying to represent, or celebrate, the natural spot, and somehow enhance that by changing things to produce something which you know - takes people there - or even if they’ve never been there - they’re just in awe of that smell - you know - want to get there…” By inviting them to follow their noses, he was making individuals want to get there, want to get here, to Cliftonville.

Old school tables for walls

By now, we had unpicked the intricacies of his process and acknowledged his motivation behind the idea. It seemed fitting that the imposing white letters above the doorway had loomed, unmentioned until now. “Haeckels”, a quiet crackle and combustion when you speak it, is drawn, in part, from some time Dom spent in Berlin where he quickly became fascinated by Ernest Haeckel (1834 - 1919), philosopher, biologist, artist. Dom’s enthusiasm for Haeckel’s drawings was obvious, “his drawings and illustrations were like the best - you know - advert for underwater exploration, to think that was the world beneath the waves - you know - you just wanted to live there.” Haeckel was a master of drawing out the expanse that existed beyond experience, contracting it to paper and bringing it to life. His precision meant that his contemporaries could absorb the structure and the sense of, say, a bird in flight without having to visit a taxidermy museum or see the bird for themselves. Their accuracy, is tantalisingly, undermined by the colours he uses, often straying from reality. The combination of imagination and precision struck a chord, with Dom’s cascading ideas as well as his attention to process, to coordinates, to detail. He stressed, however, "you know, this isn’t Ernest Haeckel, this is Haeckels - but it’s that name that just felt…” It's just a nod, to an originator and an inventor. Where it sat, Haeckels was originated, invented, owned, of course by Dom, first and foremost but suddenly the notion of ownership took on a second meaning. After all, Haeckels is a stream of stories and memories, where owned stories are contracted to their individual brown tinted bottles before they expand as the flicker of a memory across a lived face.

Originating, inventing, in some way owned

Before I left, I wanted to know the factors in his own life that had prompted him to start his extraordinary enterprise. It was in part, his career. He’d directed advertising commercials for many years and was seeking a remove from the two dimensional world that film afforded, “it was nice to get away from all of the senses that I usually rely on to do my job…” It was also, an emotional draw. He reflected on the scents that formed part of his trajectory; “It’s a weird one - Mum’s a hairdresser which definitely factors into it - the spray, perming lotion - and all that kind of stuff […] my Dad’s a carpenter - an I was - like - the smell of wood to me - you know - it’s home, as well as perm lotion - you know?” “I know”, I said. I knew. As I left Haeckel’s and closed the door, the smell of Margate reigned perfumed. There was something new in it, a reinstated depth, something that got into my nose and spread to my cheeks. Sea, shell, seaweed, sand, and the rest. Haeckels holds it all, it’s a contraction of the moments, bringing them together and disseminating them out again, beyond where they were found. Dom’s shop is in many ways, infinite, an accordion wheezing different notes as it’s folds expand and contract. If you want to be transported, beyond, between, and back again, or if you just want to smell Margate in a different way, I urge you to go.

Smell it: 

smell Margate again

For more information about Haeckels, where salt water heals all wounds: http://haeckels.co.uk