Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Illustration for the article chosen for no reason other than its beauty - a bunch of blue lotus flowers. Bravo to Tony Burfield for waging a tough negotiation and getting two great copyrighted articles in this month's Cropwatch newsletter.  Downlload the .pdfs, such as the one that is a very funny speech by Kim Kleimann, President of Berje Inc. titled "What you'll never hear from your boss." Mr. Kleimann pulls no punches, but there are lots of punchlines - in the form of very comical takes on the state of the raw materials industry. No one is sacrosanct - REACH, buyers, Scandanavian dermatologists (what a back story that is to the current state of regulation!), IFRA, sellers, anybody. I like Mr. Kleimann - he's a real straight shooter. The WFFC that this speech was presented at is the Women in Fragrance and Flavor Commerce group in New Jersey. Robert Tisserand , noted aromatherapist and I'm proud to say a member of the Natural Perfumers Guild , gave a br...

The Natural Perfumers Guild has partnered with Cropwatch in the past, most notably in early 2007, when the Guild joined them in challenging the adoption of IFRA's (International Fragrance Association) 40th Amendment without public review or input. We further support Cropwatch in their ongoing efforts to bring an outside evaluation as to the practices related to the legislative control of natural aromatics as they are used in the body care, aromatherapy and perfumery industries. The information presented below is further documentation of Cropwatch's ongoing efforts: CROPWATCH STATEMENT ON TEA TREE OIL Jan 2008. Pre-amble. The SCCP has the subject of tea tree oil (TTO) on its agenda for its Brussels meeting of 22.01.08. You will remember that allegations about the instability & skin safety of tea tree oil, as well as complaints about gaps in the toxicity data, were previously made in the flawed SCCP Opinion SCCP/0843/04, to which the Australian Te...

Sometimes it's difficult to find items for the work we do. Scent strip holders are nearly impossible to find, and the ones coming out of France, which are usually given away at trade shows, are ugly, in my opinion. I corresponded last year with the *only* firm in France that produces them (at least that's what I was told) and I just gave up. I am wanting to have some made with the Natural Perfumers Guild logo on them, either in steel or wood. I either had to contract for a minimum of 1000 or buy their squat, off-the-shelf ones. Sometimes photo or memo holders can do the job, like the Sputnik photo clip contraption found at Target and other stores. Diane Rowles, a student in my class , deserves a round of applause for discovering that antique wire "frogs", used to hold flowers in place in a vase, fit the bill. You can just push the scent strip in with one hand (a real advantage over the "clip" models,) and they're small and don't take up much room o...

The image above is really nice viewed in its original size. Just click it on. The world image is used in the online course website's internal pages. The students see that pictorial banner when the log in for their study modules, chats, or when the access the site to catch up on the downloads needed for class, to follow links or any of the many options available. The image was chose to best illustrate the ability of this course to link up natural perfumery students worldwide. You can click on the detailed Classes page on Anya's Garden for details and to read a testimonial from a Fall 2007 student. More testimonials are available upon request. The Fall 2007 class contains 26 students spanning the globe from Australia to Belgium. The Spring 2008 class, which is just being formally announced here for pre-registration is already half full, and the geographic stretch is a little further: China to Italy. I am very, very humbled by the interest and passion and dedication these studen...

It was a great surprise to find out this morning that I won something yesterday, the first day of the new year. Here's what I posted on my Yahoo group, and please note the contest I've now posted there is only open to members of that group: I'm not like many other perfumers -- I do not sample, or keep up with what's on the market. As an artist, I like to create for my own muse. I do get to sample the lovely perfumes of the Guild members, because they send them to me for the Guild Scent Library. Marina, of the great blog Perfume Smellin' Things http://perfumesmellinthings.blogspot.com/ recently had a drawing for eight of her special favorites of the past year, and I won, picked at random out of 112 entries! I used to win stuff all the time when I entered contents, and I haven't for a while (entered contests, that is), so I'm going to start again. Stuff I've won in the past: An Apple Ibook, a trip out of town to an away game with the Tampa Buccaneers, l...

Kaffir Perfume has been reviewed on the Bittergrace blog and both Kaffir and Temple are reviewed by Helg on Perfume Shrine .

I've had a lot to celebrate lately, in both my professional life as a perfumer and President of the Natural Perfumers Guild, and my personal life. After 2.5 years of grueling work, I'm able to take some time off, party more, enjoy life and just have fun. One of these events was taking my 88 year-old mother to a favorite Slow Food restaurant of mine, Michael's Genuine Food and Drink in Miami's Design District. It's practically a neighborhood place for me, being just a short drive from my house. We had reservations for a little before noon, as I knew the place gets slammed with guests and I wanted to get her settled into her seat before the place filled. When we got to the Design District, Art Basel crowds filled the streets as the galleries were open and excitement was in the air. It was very festive and a lot of fun! Michael's is set back in a treed courtyard, with the choice of indoor or outdoor seating. We choose indoor, even though the weather was nice bec...

I posted this the other day on both Perfume of Life and Basenotes. I've never met another perfumer before, and wanted to see the glitz and glamor surrounding Mr. Christian and his luxe line. He is well-known for creating "the world's most expensive perfume." Quite a heady experience for a niche artisan perfumer like me, LOL. One thing I didn't realize until afterwards -- the Neiman Marcus store was not awash in strong perfume fumes, despite many spraying and testing. I suppose they have good air "scrubbers". I appreciated this, as my nose is very sensitive, and it could have been an unpleasant experience. I was told his appearance made the nightly news locally, as did Paris Hilton's presentation of her perfume Can Can the next day. I did somehow restrain myself from going to her event, but had fun relating my visit to NM, the Chanel boutique next door, etc. Please not what a sanguine "reporter" I am, not even getting the names of the perf...

The Winter 2007 issue of Glow, a beauty and fashion magazine published in Toronto, features an article "Two Scents" that yours truly is quoted in on the subject of natural perfumery. They give equal time to Thierry Wasser, perfumer with Firmenich, and a fragrance scientist both working on the synthhetics side of perfumery. The editor has written a rather balanced view of the two camps of natural perfumery, and I think it's a good read that will help the general public get a grasp on the major differences between our artisan art and their corporate product. Click here to visit my site where you can view the PDF of the article.

November 16, 2007 Two new perfumes launched by Anya's Garden 11/07 Be the first to experience and luxuriate in the fragrance of two very different, new-to-the-market citruses , paired in unexpected ways for very different results. Mirroring the new citruses, you'll find agarwood in the base, but two very different agarwoods - one light, golden and spicy, the other true Laotian and Vietnamese dark, deep, hypnotic Ouds. Read more on the perfumes page. Kaffir Fragrance Family: Citrus-Leather Exotic, gourmand, flirty, fun, and radiating good vibes of sexy playfulness, Kaffir can transport the wearer to explore their own version of intrigue and romance -- then smoothly moves into a rich, leather drydown. For the worldy and artistic man or woman. Temple Fragrance Family: Citrus-Spice-Wood Luscious, fresh and a wake-up delight, the orange juice essential oil grabs your attention, and t...

Kaffir , a unique and groundbreaking perfume from Anya's Garden, truly is from Anya's Garden - in Miami Shores, Florida, USA. Kaffir Lime leaf, also called Thai Lime Leaf, is used in Asian cooking for the unusual, exciting, penetrating flavor it imparts. The petitgrain oil also imparts an aldehydic kick, and Kaffir the perfume honors and exalts that sensual experience. No other citrus comes close to the odor impact of kaffir, which I call the King of Citrus. There is a story of delight, destruction and rebirth behind the kaffir tree of my home garden. Nine citrus trees were planted - and ripped out - of my garden. I planted them when I moved in, but the State of Florida, in a misguided attempt to stop the spread of a non-threatening citrus disease, cut down over 1,000,000 citrus trees, including my kaffir tree. However, my kaffir was the only one to resprout from the root...

STOP THE FDA GLOBALIZATION ACT OF 2008 If it weren't for our sense of smell, would would not be able to discern the food we put in our mouths. Our sense of smell makes it possible for us to taste our food. Our tastebuds help us sense salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. When purchasing tomatoes or melons at the store, we use our nose to detect which ones are the ripest with the probable best taste. No scent? No taste. When agribusiness giants gobble up family farms, or development paves over yet another field of beans with concrete, we, the people, become more separated from the crops that smell and taste good. Every small scale farm that goes under puts another nail in the coffin of free enterprise providing fresh, tasty, nutritious food on our table or fragrant, beautiful ingredients for our natural perfumes. Taking your children out to a local farm to pick a pumpkin becomes more of an impossibility when urban sprawl means a 40-mile drive each way. I call it the Cheez-Wiz factor...

It wasn't until months later, when I had a bit of a bad bout with the February mango pollen in Miami, that I realized I had damaged my liver a bit due to 9/11. After 9/11 traumatized the nation, it was noted some people turned to self-medication to deal with the terrorism. Some drank a lot, overate, or took drugs for depression. Some perhaps did all of the above. I turned to my beautiful aromatics, absolutes, essential oils, concretes and CO2 extracts, all from nature, all complex, heady, indulgent fragrances. They allowed me to escape into their fragrant magic, distract me, overwhelm me. The year before, on my birthday, I had gone on a shopping spree, a gift to myself, of a lot of aromatics I was not familiar with, to fill in the gaps in my olfactory education. I had already been collecting and studying natural botanical essences since the early 1970's, but had let it lapse a bit in the late 1990's. In the early '90's, I had a very successful oil perfume line I sol...

Yes, this is the second time this week this image has appeared on this blog. When I blogged a few days ago on the wonderful book The Scent Trail that I had discovered, little did I imagine that within a few days the author Celia Lyttelton would join the Guild as an Associate member. I'm not even finished the book yet -- only up to p. 185, deep into the world of saffron imagery she so beautifully conveys in her visit to India. We just left nutmeg in Sri Lanka, this is a whirlwind trip! In a world that sometimes gifts you with synchronous fun moments, a friend who is on my Natural Perfumery group revealed to me that she is close friends with Celia, and in fact, they will be giving an talk together in late October. Well, quick emails were exchanged, and here we are, a gifted writer on natural aromatics is in the folds of the Guild. If you're reading this blog, you're interested in natural perfumery -- go get the book. You'll love it!