NOT JUST FOR SITTING ANYMORE THEM

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992                   TAG: 9202240240
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: E-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
NOT JUST FOR SITTING ANYMORE THEM
Imagine walking into a room and smelling a pleasant fragrance. It's not someone's cologne because no one else is there. Nor does the scent emanate from a vase of cut flowers or even from the air ducts. It seems to be coming from the furniture.
Welcome to the new age of "ambiental" furnishings: the world's first perfumed tables and chairs. We're not talking cedar or sandalwood here. This is metal, stone, leather and other woods that offer a new sensation: smell as well as sight and touch.
The originator is Thomas Hucker, 36, a New York artist whose aromatic furniture is being exhibited at the Peter Joseph Gallery on Fifth Avenue. In Hucker's words, the "new vocabulary is meant to raise the power of an object by employing sensory aspects other than texture and by how it may interact with its environment."
Hucker started out to mask the odor of synthetics he used to make contemporary tables, chairs and cabinets. That achieved, he expanded the idea to creating a smell for materials without one, such as metal. The Fragrance Foundation, an educational organization that underwrote the exhibit, introduced him to International Flavors and Fragrances in New York, a creator and manufacturer of fragrances.
Some of the scents are contained in sachets inside vented drawers, others in geometric paper flowers impregnated with perfume. The novel application is a "paint" that is brushed or rag-rubbed on undersurfaces. The object exudes a fragrance for about three months, after which the substance - a non-toxic, white, viscous liquid - can be reapplied.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB