One winter he and his husband poured candles as Christmas gifts, mixing the scents themselves and working out which one suited which friend. The friends opened them and asked where they had been bought. That question turned a hobby into a plan, and the plan held right up until he looked hard at what he was actually selling. The wax was only a carrier. What he cared about was the blend inside it.

So the candles went and the oils stayed, which left the question of how to get a scent into a room without a wick or a machine. Lava stone answered it. Every set ships with one raw piece, five to eight centimetres, broken irregularly so no two are alike, and a black tray for it to sit on. One to four drops go onto the porous surface. No power, no water. Every so often the stone is rinsed under warm water so the pores stay open. One set is meant for a room of up to about fifteen square metres.

The range stops at five. Forest Moss came out of a month at sea during his time in the navy, a month without setting foot on land. My Sicily is a slow summer in Noto with his husband. Moon Breeze he mixed first for his own family. Lumio came from afternoons outdoors with an animal asleep close by. The fifth is Tau.

The shop sorts them into five numbered rituals rather than by floral, woody or citrus. Anyone who wants to meet all of them first can buy a tin of five two-millilitre vials.

The composition is printed out in full on every page: thyme linalool, ravintsara, niaouli and benzoin Siam in Moon Breeze, furanocoumarin-free bergamot in Lumio, tonka bean and cedarwood under Forest Moss. All of it botanical, and none of it meant for skin. The label is plain about that. The wearable half of the work sits outside the shop altogether, three eaux de parfum numbered 101, 102 and 103, each made up only when somebody orders one.