The hidden Berkeley museum that brings visitors to tears |
When you walk down a nondescript residential Berkeley driveway into the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, the first thing you see is a shrine to whale poop. Known within the scent world as ambergris, the material forms within sperm whales’ gastrointestinal tracts and sometimes includes the beaks of squid and cuttlefish, one of the mammal’s primary food sources. The ambergris on display is 50 years old, and it’s placed alongside 100-year-old bottles of ambergris oil.
It’s parfumier Mandy Aftel’s favorite scent in the world (her least favorite is cooked fish).
“I love ambergris. First of all, it’s ambery. Which is a kind of warm, rich, soft smell that’s somewhat like balsamic vinegar but not vinegary, kind of that warm dark thing that goes on that’s slightly sweet,” Aftel said. “But what it also has for me is shimmer, if a smell could shimmer or sparkle like sparkle eye shadow.” When used in perfumes, she said, it’s akin to adding salt to a dish, in that it makes other scents pop.
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Parfumier Mandy Aftel smells a scent at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, Calif., on Jan. 29, 2026.
Bottles of scents, including fennel, are available to sniff outside at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, Calif., on Jan. 29, 2026.
Foster Curry and his wife parfumier Mandy Aftel stand in front of the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, Calif., on Jan. 29, 2026.
Now 77 years old, Aftel has been making natural perfume for 30 years. Before that, she was a psychotherapist for artists and writers, as well as an author, penning an oral history of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Decades ago, she fell down the rabbit hole of cultural rituals involving scent by studying old books; some on display at the museum date back hundreds of years.
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“[Scent] has a very tangled, interesting history with us as people all over the world,” Aftel said. “It makes us all similar, to me. It’s where we all come from. It was used in every ritual —........