Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey

The new librarian in the rare books collection recommends the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales to all new visitors; It's a one-of-a-kind, handwritten by medieval clerics, etc, and it's one of the oldest books in the library. But her favorite edition is actually by the Kelmscott Press. It's a Nouveau fantasy: all twisting branches and plentiful draping. A bright floral heightened by a touch of lemon zest, tamped down by centuries of creeping moss and thick roots, finally yellowed to a fine, acrid glow, wafting off the page.

The art of aging beautifully, she muses, is all in one's demeanor. Retain a bearing of monastic elegance and you can never go wrong... even if it means tightly confining those fructiferous tendrils of flora to the unyielding grains of a woodblock. But wood does yield, and that warm, oak edge left a print that softly combines the best of the wilderness and the worktable, together, in love, at last.