Scentorium artisan profile

Holladay Saltz

Apoteker Tepe

A designer and researcher from the American South who taught herself perfume formulation and founded Apoteker Tepe, one of the cult names of American indie perfumery.

The story

Holladay Saltz grew up around Jackson, Mississippi. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and then fashion and material culture at Parsons, The New School, and worked as an academic researcher at the Institute of Play and the Institute for the Future of the Book, as well as a visiting scholar at NYU. Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses rekindled her interest in smell, and she went on to study formulation intensively at Le Labo in New York.

The work

She founded Apoteker Tepe in 2014 and led it as creative and operational director until 2018. Her first perfumes, O Íakche!, Eleusis, Ta Hiéra and The Rharian Field (2014), were followed by After the Flood, Anabasis, The Holy Mountain and Peradam (2015), then Karasu and Pale Fire (2016). After the house went quiet, Nicholas Nilsson of Pineward acquired it in 2022 and brought it back; Brother Night followed the same year.

At Scentorium

The Apoteker Tepe collection, made today by Nicholas Nilsson from her compositions. New to her work? Start with The Holy Mountain, the one everyone remembers.