Meet Song Inbeom, Glass Artist Behind Écrit et Parfum’s Signature Diffuser
“Perhaps emotions are themselves like perfumes: invisible yet undeniably present, flowing, seeping in, lingering long after they’ve passed.
I traced a single line to capture the space left behind, the echo of what has been felt.”
Envol, 2025, Hand-blown transparent glass
Éveil, 2025, Hand-blown opaque glass
Introduction
In his masterpiece The Wings, Yi Sang implies that imperfection itself can become a form of beauty.
Inspired by this unique aesthetic, we sought to create an art object that embodies Envol and Éveil, a fragrance duo from Écrit et Parfum.
This vision led to a collaboration with Inbeom Song, a Korean glass artist whose work best captures this philosophy, culminating in a limited-edition diffuser art piece.
Working with fragile glass and etching strokes upon it, artist Inbeom Song operates on the philosophy that while no two pieces can ever be perfectly identical, they are profoundly beautiful just as they are. The following is our interview with him.
About Song Inbeom
Song Inbeom is a Korean glass artist whose work centers on free-blown techniques using both opaque and transparent glass. His objects, shaped by bold, ink-like strokes of color and restrained, meticulously composed lines, transform like ink wash paintings under shifting light and time. Therefore, each piece is an exploration toward infinite possibility.
Meeting with Écrit et Parfum
Q. What was your first impression when Écrit et Parfum approached you for collaboration?
A: At first glance, Écrit et Parfum seemed distant from my usual practice. After all, I work with visual forms, while perfume deals with scent. But I deeply resonated with how the brand seeks to articulate emotions that resist purely visual or sculptural language. What struck me most was its literary, narrative approach to fragrance. For me it is an experimental attempt to weave stories from the intangible.
Q. How do you see parallels between interpreting fragrance and your own sculptural process?
A: I felt a strong affinity between the way fragrance blurs the boundaries between inner and outer reality, and the way glass behaves during the blowing process. Glass is never truly fixed until it cools. It flows, responds, shifts. Working with it feels like moving continuously between the tangible world and the emotional one. The very idea of composing fragrance, as something that unfolds, lingers, and directs itself, mirrors my own artistic process. Both are about tracing motion, memory, and atmosphere.
The Encounter Between Fragrance and Glass Art
Q. When you smelled the two fragrances, Envol and Éveil, both inspired by the short novel “Wings” by Yi-Sang, what images or keywords came to mind?
A: With Envol, I immediately envisioned a bright, open space, specifically a windowsill where wind flows freely. It felt like air itself, weightless and expansive, filled with spaciousness. The words that naturally arose were: “wind, expansion, emptiness, brightness.”
In contrast, Éveil felt like a dim room, lit only faintly through a small window. Sensation gathered inward, heavy and concentrated. I thought of “darkness, density, focus, stillness.”
Q. The project presents these two opposing emotional endings of “Wings” through scent. How did this duality resonate with you?
A: Working with glass always involves a delicate balance between instability and intense focus. One fragrance, Envol, evoked that feeling of lightness, opening, release; the other, Éveil, brought forth a deep, sinking interiority. The existence of two possible endings made me reflect on the layered nature of life and emotion. Ultimately, it offered me a new lens through which to view my own work.
Q. If you imagined each fragrance as a physical space, what would those spaces be like?Consider light, texture, time of day…
A: Envol, to me, is a luminous interior brimming with empty space that is open, airy, alive with movement. Éveil resembles a quiet, shadowed room, where light barely slips through a narrow window.
Though these spaces touch each other, they awaken perception in entirely different ways: one through openness, the other through depth.
Q. How was this experience different from your usual work?
A: What was most compelling about this meeting of literature, scent, and glass art was how the work expanded beyond language. Emotions too subtle for words became etched into glass as a single line, and then, unexpectedly, reread through the medium of fragrance. This cross-sensory cycle, where one sense translates into another, and back again, felt profoundly new and moving.
A final message
“Perhaps emotions are themselves like perfumes. It is invisible yet undeniably present, flowing, seeping in, lingering long after they’ve passed. I traced a single line to capture the space left behind, the echo of what has been felt.”
