Maurizio Cerizza
Maurizio Cerizza grew up surrounded by the raw materials of perfumery. His father Aurelio founded EMA (Essences of Aromatic Materials) in Milan in 1946, establishing one of Italy's oldest essential oil companies. A decade later, Aurelio opened a dedicated extraction facility in Imperia, where precious naturals like jasmine, rose, orris, and ylang-ylang passed through young Maurizio's hands and nostrils before he could read. Cerizza pursued formal training at the prestigious Roure Bertrand Dupont school, now part of Givaudan, studying under René Ricord, who himself had trained under the legendary Jean Carles. This lineage introduced him to a methodical approach that emphasizes fragrance memorization and classification into fifteen olfactory families. His breakthrough arrived in 1986 with a women's fragrance for Roccobarocco, launching a career spanning over three decades and more than one hundred compositions. Today, as Master Perfumer at Creative Fragrance & Flavours in Milan, Cerizza remains a cornerstone of Italian perfumery, creating for houses including The House of Oud, Roberto Ugolini, Rancé 1795, and Onyrico.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Maurizio composes
Cerizza's work reflects the discipline of the Roure method he absorbed early in his career. He favors working with natural materials, drawing on his family's deep expertise in extraction and distillation to inform every creation. His fragrances often balance structure with unexpected warmth, whether composing the spicy-sweet Marrakech for The House of Oud or the resinous fig-forward Michelangelo for Onyrico. Italian elegance threads through his work, evident in compositions for heritage brands like Pino Silvestre and Profumi di Pantelleria. Though trained in classical technique, he adapts his approach to contemporary tastes without sacrificing depth or complexity. The sensory memory cultivated from childhood among essential oils gives his work an authenticity that synthetic-forward compositions rarely achieve.
Philosophy
What drives Maurizio
"The perfumer is essentially an artist who has to use raw materials as a painter uses colors and a musician uses notes," Cerizza says. He considers the creation of mental associations between essential oils and what their odors evoke to be fundamental to the craft. This synaesthetic approach, developed through years of olfactory training, allows him to first imagine and then realize combinations on paper before ever touching a bottle. He views fragrance creation as pure artistry, building bridges between raw materials and personal memory to produce something that resonates beyond simple composition. His process demands patience, precision, and an unwavering commitment to understanding each ingredient's character on the most intimate level.
The houses