Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Helg of the Perfume Shrine approached me several weeks ago with the proposal that we write a "Double Dubrana" today to pay our separate homages to the wonderful perfumer I know as Salaam of AbdesSalaam Attar Profumo di Dominique Dubrana of Italy. I was eager to participate in this joint effort, noting to Helg I would not be reviewing his beautiful perfumes as she is doing - instead I will reminisce about the man, the perfumer I know and how his stature has developed and spread as an esteemed natural perfumer. Salaam joined my online natural perfumery group on Yahoo a few years ago and became an active participant, sharing his knowledge and spiritual philosophy about the pure and natural aromatics we use to create our all-natural perfumes. I was honored when Salaam joined the Natural Perfumers Guild as a Professional Perfumer last year because I had sampled many of his perfumes over the years and found them to have an elegance and quality that set them apart, in a league of ...

How Anya got her Aromatherapy and Natural Perfumery Groove on With Someone She's Admired for Almost 30 Years. Ok, that's just silly, but read on for a nice, sweet story about how I got to work with an industry icon I've admired for decades . (blogged about earlier today on the Guild blog, but here is the personal story behind it all.) In 1979 I was happily stunned, amazed and excited to find that there was a book that claimed that the beautiful essential oils I loved had the power to heal the mind, body and spirit. Robert Tisserand was the author of that book, and I collected every one of his books since then, and I regarded him as the #1 aromatherapist in the world in both scholarly endeavors and as spokesman for responsible aromatherapy. Fast forward to 2006. Robert found his way to the natural perfumery group I host on Yahoo and joined in the lively discussion. We corresponded behind the scenes and a true bond was formed. In early 2007 I agreed to join Tony Burfield of...

On Saturday, May 3, 2008 Egyptologist and Perfumer David Mark of Chicago's Renaissance Aromas was the guest for the Expert Q&A session (formerly known as Guest Lecturer series) in Anya's Garden online Natural Perfumery class . Originally scheduled for the Spring 2008 students' Module, due to popular demand the Fall 2007 students joined the Q&A, resulting in a student audience of 45 for Marks' session. David had just returned from an Egyptologist conference in Seattle, so he was brimming with news and scholarly insight to share with the students. The subject was the legendary and mysterious Egyptian incense known as kyphi. David has studied kyphi for many years, and he explained that there is no one kyphi recipe - the use of kyphi spanned many dynasties and changed according to new ingredients being introduced to Egypt by trade route introductions. Additionally, it is impossible today to recreate some of the kyphi recipes, since the ancient Egyptian language is n...

STOP THE FDA GLOBALIZATION ACT OF 2008 CROPWATCH AT THE CROSSROADS - looking for your feedback note: if you wish to contact Tony about the questions below, you can write him at info@cropwatch.org After 4 or 5 years of continuous activity, Cropwatch has some choices to make. Do we go on the way that we have been, snapping at the ankles of those who run & regulate the aroma industry so badly, or should we 'old dogs' learn some new tricks? Cropwatch s upporters, and organisations sympathetic to our aims, regularly offer us donations and advise us of potential sources of grants, to which we have always said 'no thanks, we're non-financed'. Our current thinking is that this might be a mistake, since we are limiting our potential effectiveness. . We are certainly not asking everyone for money, but we are asking you to help us with some feedback on how a financial input could potentially help the aroma world to become a better & fairer place, so please mail...

David Mark of Renaissance Aromas (website TBA shortly) and an Associate Member of the Natural Perfumers Guild will be a Guest Expert in my online Natural Perfumery class . David's topic will be Kyphi incense, the ancient Egyptian blend whose mystique and legend persists to this day. There are many "recipes" for Kyphi and for the Module 1 History section of my class, I give the students the option of choosing an ancient perfume or scent formula to recreate so that they get a hint of what was fashionable then. Overwhelmingly, they choose Kyphi. David has conducted scholarly research into Kyphi and graciously offered his services to me. I'm very thankful for his generosity, as it will give my students access to a great repository of information. Here's how I broke the good news of David's schedule being firmed up in our class: Well, guess why David can't meet with us this Saturday? Because he's going to a fabulous Egyptologist convention in Seattle! How...

The price of patchouli essential oil has skyrocketed in the past year. An crucial and historic scent in perfume and body care products, various issues have conspired to create a shortage and suppliers and formulators are scrambling to control cost increases in their products. I know I'm an eternal optimist. I also have a strong background in ethnobotany, economic botany and agriculture. I specialized in tropical and subtropical agriculture in my studies, keep this in mind when you check out the You Tube link, below. In 2005, a team from Haiti met with the President of Rwanda to propose a Patchouli project. There is a series of five videos on You Tube recording the process of establishing a patchouli essential oil industry in Rwanda by the movers and shakers of this project. The videos are educational and uplifting. I am very aware of he political and military turmoils of Rwanda, having several close friends who traveled there in the aftermath and are helping with the rebuilding. Re...

This photo was taken at the press party for the 10th Annual Bob Marley Caribbean Music Festival. It was the last year I worked as the PR person for the event, as perfumery business took more and more of my time. You can read more about Mother B here on Myspace I wish I knew how to work Myspace to leave a message, but I don't so I'll write here. Mother B was like a second mother to me and probably thousands of others. She spread her joy and wisdom and kindness to every soul she met, and she will be sorely missed. As I call friends today to tell them the news, and even as I told my own mother, I choked up and couldn't speak. I put a page up 10 years ago that hosts a photo I took of Mother B the night I met her in 1996. It remains one of my favorite photos of her, regal on her birthday throne, radiating her love out. Peace and joy and rest Mother B, now you are in Zion with Bob and Anthony.

One of my earliest scent memories is the fresh, uplifting scent of lavender soap. I know I liberally splashed on Yardley English Lavender cologne from about age 10 or so, when I got my first bottle. Always floral, herbal and clean, it's always has made me smile. It's one of the few "unisex" scents meaning men and women use it with no thought associations that it is more relevant to the opposite sex. For example, many men may balk at wearing a rose scent, but not lavender. I have about 20 different extracts of lavender in my perfumer's organ: organic essential oils from South Africa, England and the United States; conventioanlly farmed essential oils from all over the world; high altitude from the French Alps; absolutes and concretes from several different countries and several different species other than the most common one I'm discussing here, which is Lavandula vera aka L. angustifolia. I dilute them out to evaluate them, and I find one emotional thread run...

I recently attended an online webinar that addressed natural flavors and fragrances and one of the topics discussed was " developing realistic definitions of what is, and is not, natural ." First, as a lead-in they talked about the various ins and outs of the word "organic", how it is defined and the legislation that governs that word. The various agencies that have a piece the action as far as defining "organic" is large, varied, international, and (typically) non-binding. I'm deliberately vague because that definition is a related, but different subject from what I wish to cover here. The term organic seems rather fluid at times to me, and to write about it would keep me blogging for days, so I will pass on that effort. The word natural in the flavor and fragrance industries is unregulated at this time. That means that any company, for any reason, can label a product natural in an effort to market to the yoga moms and other marketing demographic that...

Click the image to enlarge it for viewing My entry in the Memory and Desire project was posted last night . I'll wait a few days to see the comments and answer them here, as that forum is just for reader comments, not perfumer-answers-the-readers comments. Thanks so much to Heather, she's a peach for all the effort and intellect she put into this monumental Internet project.

Below is a letter I just received from Tony Burfield of Cropwatch. Feel free to redistribute it. Dear All, Citrus Oils: the Situation Cropwatch is directly opposing IFRA's Risk Assessment on furanocoumarins, and its proposals to severely restrict citrus oil usage in cosmetics products. Unfortunately, because of the lack of transparency exercised by RIFM, IFRA and the EU Commission over this matter. it means that unless you, dear reader, belong to a professional association, probably won't get to see IFRA's information letter IL799 on the topic, or the Risk Assessment that the EU Commission was given in late 2007 by IFRA. IFRA have apparently suggested a cosy future chat with the EU Commissioners, some unnamed industry moguls and fragrance consumers (presumably IFRA or RIFM members) to 'explain matters' - presumably code for agreeing their highly restrictive citrus oil proposals (see below) with the EU regulator. Nobody with an independent or contrary opinion is to ...

My gigantic plant of Jasmine sambac Duke of Tuscany is starting to bloom. This sambac is slow growing and has huge - for jasmine huge I should qualify - flowers about the size of a tiny carnation, full of tightly-packed petals and the most tender non-indolic jasmine scent ever. I just adore it! I just plucked the first blossom of the season from it today, and left one on for the birds and lizards to enjoy ;-) It's full of about-to-open buds, and I hope I have some to bring to the lunch tomorrow of the Miami NP crew so they can enjoy it. I coined the organoleptic term "tender" and I have to add that to the Aromatic Lexicon on the evaluation sheet my students use. So many of the home-grown jasmines I have become "tender" upon tincturing. Sigh. They're just so lovely, tender, powdery, soft, sweet and delicious. April and May are the big jasmine blooming months here in Miami, not August and September as they are in India and France. Don't know the reason fo...

Click on the photo for enlarged view Long before the marketers and perfume houses got savvy, a display spilled the coal, er, the beans: the source of many of the synthetic aromachemicals used in perfumery since the 1880's were made from coal or petroleum sources. The lady in the photo seems to be raising a glass lid over a container that holds scent strips of the coal-derived scent, and the glass jars on top hold the natural materials of fragrance. I can identify rose and jasmine in the jars. Not much else to say about this, just that I do prefer the complexity, richness, sustainability and beauty of natural aromatics.

Luca Turin, perfume critic, author of the soon-to-be-released The Perfume Guide just wrote about a custom perfume he had made by Dominique Dubrana of Italy . We in the Guild know him as a Professional Perfumer who prefers to be called Salaam, a longtime member of my Yahoo Natural Perfumery group and Guild member. His keen insights and helpful comments offered in our private group always have a ring of experience and clarity, and he gets to the soul of the matter with ease. Turin found it refreshing that Salaam did not require a questionnaire about astrological sign, personality traits, or other psychological items that are so often the tool of the custom perfumer. Instead Turin got to choose the raw materials from a list. The resultant perfume has increased the openly-skeptical Turin's opinion of what a perfume made only with natural ingredients can be - and we must thank Salaam for that. Additionally, Salaam is the only natural perfumer included in Turin's new book, anothe...