Linda Pilkington was working from her kitchen when she received an order that helped establish Ormonde Jayne.
Chanel Fine Jewellery had commissioned a scented candle, with a brief that included matching the decoration of Coco Chanel's apartment at the Ritz in Paris. Pilkington spent months working on the fragrance and colour. When an order for 50 candles followed, she needed a registered company to issue the invoice.
She chose Ormonde Jayne, combining the name of the street where she had set up her atelier with her middle name.
Making things had been part of her life for years. She had rolled beeswax candles and blended room sprays as a child. Later, she travelled through the Middle East, Asia and South America, collecting oils, spices and other materials. She also ran an ice cream business, where she experimented with flavours and presentation.
Her interest in ingredients eventually found its way into perfume.
Ormonde Woman is one example. Its composition includes black hemlock, violet and jasmine, alongside woods such as cedar and sandalwood. The house identifies hemlock as part of its signature, giving the perfume a useful connection to Pilkington's interest in materials less commonly encountered in fragrance.
The first boutique opened on Old Bond Street in October 2001. Production later developed into the house's own manufacturing operation, now based in Kent.
That is quite a distance from the first kitchen experiments, although the link between them is easy to follow. The business grew out of someone making products, refining them and finding customers who wanted to buy them.
For anyone discovering Ormonde Jayne today, that background adds context to the perfumes on the shelf.
Sources: Ormonde Jayne's story and Ormonde Woman.
Photograph: Ormonde Jayne. Ormonde Jayne's current candle collection. This photograph illustrates the house's candle-making background; it does not depict the original Chanel commission.