Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Our sense of smell. Our nose. Our reason for reading blogs like this, or obsessing about perfumes, some of us so finely-tuned to our scent receptors we sniff wet metal, rotting wood, paint, everything funky and sublime, no barriers. We just sniff. We love to stimulate and pleasure our nose. And think about what we've just sniffed. And think about what there is out there to sniff. There may be a blog titled "Lipstick is my Crack" but in my opinion, the perfume lovers need a "Perfume is my Crack" site. We spend a lot more than the lipstickistas, and heck, we can spray our sheets with our adored perfumes, setting the mood for our nighttime reverie. And the lipstickistas don't remember their first shade of gloss -- but I bet they do remember the scent of it. The nose rules all. The Smell Culture Reader is a must read. This anthology only covers perfume slightly, but it does delve and swim and luxuriate in the full world of scent, blending the funny with the inte...

Deceptively fragile and innocent looking, the white flowers are the secret nose bombs of the perfume world. The tuberose pictured here, from my garden, is capable of scenting the air for many meters, and the essence of the tuberose, in a perfume does the same. Diffusive, narcotic, wildly sensual, these Mexican natives hold sway over many a garden and many a lover. If you right click on view photo the larger version will allow you to see the thick waxy surface, oil cells and pollen of this lovely flower. UPDATE: I'm getting use to the blogweirdness. If you just double click the photo, it will enlarge. The Grasse Jasmine officinale var. Grandiflorum looks like a tiny innocuous, almost boring flower, but it is the most esteemed in the perfume world. The indolic nature - has a bit of decaying funk to it - can turn some off, but its power to turn everyone else on is its secret. The requirement that it must be hand-picked during an optimal time window each day, quickly transported to th...

Perfumery photo by Peter Kaminski Last night I was on the phone with another natural perfumer, and the talk turned to when we first got turned on to perfumes. I was fortunate enough to be exposed to glorious perfumes in the first big heyday of post-WWII perfume. From what I understand of history, before that, women only received perfume as gifts, but after the war, demand for the beautiful juice was prodded by returning soldiers bring lots of perfume gifts back, and the newly-liberated Rosie the Riveter types deciding they were going to snag a lot of this stuff for themselves with their new paychecks. So, by age 2, in 1952, I was the happy recipient of nearly-empty bottles of great perfumes, given to me by my mother, relatives,and my mother's friends. A cousin in Paris modeled for Dior, and I'm sure some of my stash came from her (she was 25 years older than me, not a child model ;-) So here's my funniest story: I'm about three years old. I'm sitting on the fl...

The Artisan Natural Perfumers Guild opened its doors on June 1, 2006. It's a Guild for the modern age, uniting artists by the internet rather than the village in which they live geographically. You can click on the Guild website to read the necessary background and glossy stuff, but in this blog I can get more personal as to what the Guild means to me, how it evolved, and how wonderful it is to see this community develop. I'm the Founder and Owner of the Guild. A little history: Mandy Aftel started another Guild in 2002. After problems managing the Guild, and rancor with local members, Mandy closed that Guild in 2003. Mandy came to know of my work hosting a huge - now almost 1000 members - Yahoo group on Natural Perfumery, and after a phone call last June to inquire how I was doing when the group hit a little bump in the road, she suggested I open a new Guild. Mandy admitted the main reason she closed the Guild was that she didn't have the knack for managing a gro...

A river in a desert is a precious thing. Parched rock and sand support few people, plants or animals. When a river or water body is found in a desert, an Oasis develops. The perfume Riverside that I have created is an homage to the botanical garden and citrus research station of the University of Riverside, California, where I received my degree in Economic Botany. It was as they say, the "salad days" of my youth, involved passionately with my studies, with my husband, dog, cats, environment, and learning how to think, since UCR was a think tank for upperclass and grad students, and the faculty there.. Most of the time, I "worked at" having fun and playing with essential oils and attars, as I was still a few years from discovering concretes and absolutes. As often as possible, I took the UCR bus into UCLA to visit the stacks of the library where ancient herbal books were kept, and to visit a shop in Westwood, The Magic Dragon. There, the owners would draw the shades...

There is another Anya's Garden . It exists as a reading assignment in California schools, and reportedly comes from an old Indian folktale. I found it last year when I was googling the term Anya's Garden in anticipation of registering my website. It's a sweet little tale, made modern by the CA teachers and their pragmatic worksheet, which gives me a good laugh. Edited to add: If you click on the boldened phrase Anya's Garden in the first sentence you will be transferred to that site. I don't know how to make links more noticable with this template.

The wild Fairchild just had to be.......overpowering, intoxicating, narcotic, sweet, sassy, sensual, foodie, wet, mossy, oceanic (in the *natural* sense) startling, and have long legs, like the botanical garden it represents, ancient by Miami standards, yet always renewing. Originally mostly swamp, it sits on the edge of Biscayne Bay, 80 acres of wonderland, from brakish flats to a slight escarpment with long axis views, open meadows, towering trees, the largest palm collection in the world (I think), sunken gardens, fruits, and yes, the flowers. Fairchild is not known for showy flowers, but due to demands of some of the board, designing floral displays into the garden is coming. It's the scent of the hidden flowers that gets you. The magnificent ylang ylangs, the huge pandanus (there is a Pandanus Lake there, ringed by the Screwpines), the jasmines, champakas, white and gold, the citrus... on and on. A visitor not used to the sometimes smothering effect that tropical flowers can h...

My Pan is surprisingly gentle and universally rustic. No citified scent, this Pan. Green and herbal and fruity, he's the non-Metrosexual man/god. A nod to the base of male scent, the "in-heat", rutting or wild animal clamboring over rocks, frolicking in a field, dancing through a forest, playing the pipes, leading the ladies on his merry way. A humanized view of Pan from Jitterbug Perfume, made volatile and vaporous, softly clinging to the skin, almost too tame, in a way, but not if you recognize as Tom Robbins did, that Pan has lost a lot of his power, strength and yes, funk - in the modern world. He played musical notes that seduced and caused others to be drawn to him, and is recognized as the basis of the Pied Piper of Hamlin story. I played with aromatic notes in his honor, notes of botanicals associated with him, his woods, herbs, grapes, and flowers, and I am very happy with the green juice. This perfume for men draws you in, with the subtle pheromones of the tinct...

After many hurricanes in the past year, launching the Artisan Natural Perfumery Guild , taking on several business enterprises, various health and home issues -- Anya's Garden will soon debut at http://anyasgarden.com The garden where perfume - naturally - flows from is the culmination of decades of botany, horticulture, perfume study and generally being a gadabout. Time out for landscape architecture, land planning, photography, journalism and whatnot, it is all very pleasing to be back to what I loved as a child - perfume. My first perfume line was launched on South Beach (Miami Beach) Florida in 1992. They were sold under the Anya's Tropical Essences name, and the simple flintglass bottles held a quarter ounce of perfumes with names like East Africa, India Wood, Riviera, Ancient Amber and Roots. Many stores in the area, and some hotels carried them. That led to private label work with hotels, and bespoke perfumes commissioned by lovers of natural aromatics. In 1991, I starte...