Ask the Perfumer - Sunday, May 13, 2012

-
Dear Friends:

There will be no Ask the Perfumer forum today, as it is Mother's day in the USA and my mother died just six weeks ago.  I will spend the day quietly.  I wish all love and good wishes towards those of you who still have your mothers.  Here is a photo of my mother taken June, 1966 when she was 46 years old.  I couldn't bring myself to write a tribute to her today, as I have been very sad all week.  However, if there was a one sentence tribute, it would be that she is the one who introduced me to my first passion, perfume, and that has stayed with me every day of my life.



Comments

  1. Anonymous5/14/2012 8:57 PM

    Thanks Anya, for this great picture of your mother. Her smile and stance show a certain strength of character and pride. It pleases me that you choose to share this with your fans. We are out there. Just as your mother's lingering passion is with you. Jes

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5/28/2012 9:57 AM

    Ahhhhh, I remember this woman. Many, many good times. A truer friendship between our moms couldn't be found. To think they lived so long, were friends for what? 80 years? and crossed over within a few weeks of one another. Each concerned with the other's welfare right up until the very end. A truely special friendship indeed. - Katie

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnyasGardenPerfumes5/29/2012 3:48 PM

    Hi Anonymous #1 - not sure who you are, but thanks for the note you left. Katie, thanks for dropping by. I'm trying to find some photos of them together, and all I've found is one from early 1951 and another from 1992 at a wedding. Oh, and your mother's wedding pic. I'll get the first two properly scanned and send them to you and Suzanne.

    xoxo,
    Anya

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boxgasm - for perfumers, aromatherapists, bath and body manufacturers, chandlers. What the heck is a boxgasm? Well, read below and you may have one.

-
Image
Project Boxgasm Announcement: If you are an artisan who makes perfume, bath & body products, aromatherapy products, candles - you can now make your own custom boxes! The Natural Perfumers Guild wishes to share this discovery with everyone, so please share the link to this blog with other groups, forums and chat places you may frequent.  The more the merrier - let's upgrade our products to the next level, with lovely, custom boxes!  I am the President of the Guild, and I like to roam social media sites and check out, and "like" the various projects and announcements of the Guild members.  Little did I dream when I visited a Facebook page of one of our members, a page that only had 21 followers, since it's new, that I'd discover something that can help all artisan small business owners. But there it was, an iconic image out of South Africa - custom perfume boxes! When I called some members of the Natural Perfumers Guild and told them about the discovery th...
Read more

Rangoon Creeper - a new flower for perfumery

-
Image
Last year Trygve of Enfleurage asked me if I was growing Quisqualis in my fragrant garden.  She knew I grew and harvested fragrant flowers leaves and roots for scent extraction.  The distillations, tinctures and enfleurage washes are made from my garden bounty and find their way into my perfumes.  At first the name didn't register, then I remembered Rangoon Creeper, a vine that is almost a weed here in South Florida. It can spread aggressively, covering trees and buildings! I decided to give it a try, on a length of fence on the far side of my property, a place that doesn't get any supplemental irrigation.  Within one year, the vine is about 25' long, and is setting out spreader branches in several directions.  I'll prune it to keep in check, and in the meantime, I'm enjoy the nighttime/early morning fragrance of the thousands of flowers blooming.  I'm growing the single-flowers variety, and there is a double-flowered variety available.  The double-f...
Read more

Ask the Perfumer Sunday Oct 21, 2012

-
Image
Ask the Perfumer - and an Ambergris hypothesis Guild member Lisa Coburn posted a link on Facebook that took me to a video on how cephalopods--squid, cuttlefish and octopus, are masters of disguise.  As I watched it, I made a perfume connection, straight to the elusive, mysterious, rare and valued ambergris, a gorgeous material used in perfumery. Photo of the famed 'Yeti' chunk of ambergris. Ambergris is produced by the stomach/intestinal secretions of the sperm whale to protect its insides from the sharp beaks of the squid and cuttlefish, two main items in its diet.  The whale evacuates the chunk of ambergris when it becomes large enough to be an irritant on its own, albeit a softer, rounder irritant compared to the beak and cartilage of the squid or cuttlefish.  As a perfumer, I often have to gently remind excitable newbies ;-)  that the scent of the ambergris is secondary to its major contribution to a perfume, which is its ability to 'marry' and a...
Read more