Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Answering questions about perfumery is second nature to me. I've hosted the huge Natural Perfumery group on Yahoo for almost seven years, I instruct perfumers, I consult with perfumers about their businesses, and I just live my life immersed in the art. Sometimes I feel questions I answer on the Yahoo group are just stuck in a bit of a hidden-away area of the Internet. I have read *every one* of the 39960 messages there. Yes, we're going to hit 40,000 soon! That's a lot of perfume talk. Whew. The mind almost boggles, but the spirit says take the show on the road, like our well-appointed apothecarian-perfumer in the image above. So, I'm going to open up my blog every Sunday for questions. I know a lot, but there's a lot I don't know, so please forgive me if I can't answer your question. I'll let you know when I can't, and I'll try to send you on a path to find the answer. Oh, math will stump me. A bit. I can't answer math questions on the...

Disclaimer:  It has come to my attention that Douglas Stewart of Scentsual Antiquities has a link to this blog post, perhaps implying that he is endorsed by me.  This is not the case, and I have no affiliation with him, and would wish he would take the link down, as it is deceptive.

I just won this postcard on eBay, and I wanted to share because I really dig the imagery. I also like their setup, it's so simple.

The image is that of an old Frapper map of the students. I think Frapper is going to be gone within the year, and I'll miss it. It hasn't updated for a while, and while it was, it was fun to see where all the students of the Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute were located all over the world. We have had four from Australia since this map appeared, one from Singapore, Germany, Kuwait...the list is truly international. I'm going to find a new way to map the students, "watch this space" as they say ;-) About the course and the website - you know, when you build something from the ground up, with your own knowledge, your own creative ideas, and your own hours of dedication and hard work, it means so much. It's your baby, nobody else can claim it, you made it. It's very rewarding, very rewarding. When I was prodded into teaching back in 2007, I put the coursework together as quickly as I could, to meet the student's demands. So I created a P...

I am posting this ad for Stratus Insurance. I was in negotiations with them for both the Guild and the this group and the natural perfumery community at large. They're offering great rates to the Guild, and some folks might want to join to save over non-Guild rates ;-) BTW, if you have a business that is not 100% natural perfumery, you can still join in the Stratus deal. I did negotiate on behalf of the NP community, but I realize many here may use fragrance oils or aromachemicals. You can still get this insurance. Just make sure you use this page to apply: http://www.stratusins.info/perfumers_app.php At the bottom of the page, if you're not a member of the Guild, check off if you are a member of the Yahoo NP group. I will work with Natasaha Gray to confirm Guild members at this time, since we've had about a dozen new members in the past week and they're not listed on the website yet. In the future, the Guild will have a separate application page. Also, for th...

Below please find the transcript of the Powerpoint presentation Natural Perfumers Guild Associate Tony Burfield of Cropwatch gave to the British Society of Perfumers March, 2010. Tony Burfield was the only presenter at the Safety and Regulatory symposium who did not offer ways for the perfumers to comply EFFA, SCCNFP, REACH et al. Instead, he presented fact after scientific fact as to why much of the compliance requirements are based on bad science and political maneuverings, coupled with a dose of market manipulation. The Natural Perfumers Guild is proud to have Tony as a member and we hope that those reading this will help spread the information presented here. So goes REACH, so go your beloved perfumes. Tony Burfield's Cropwatch is: A loosely based, non-financed, independent watch-dog to the aroma & natural products trade. In existence approx 6-7 years. Best known for its pro-active campaigning activities on natural aromatics, data-bases on threaten...

  I planted about 100 tuberose bulbs this past weekend, so the photo above is just a perfumer's dream. Let's see if it comes true. Hello again everyone. I've been kind of off the grid blog wise, and Facebook and Twitter-wise, too, for a few weeks. I've posted a bit on FB and Twitter, because there are just some news items and helpful plugs I have to put out there for friends.  This will probably be one of the most unfocused blogs I've ever written, kind of like stream of thought.....so this blog post is going to be a little of this, a little of that, and just catching up on the busy, fulfilling life of an artisan perfumer. On March 1st, I felt relaxed for the first time in six months. Since September, I had been working on not just my perfumery, which had an incredible upsurge in sales with the release of MoonDance and StarFlower perfumers, but I took part in a big PR effort in NYC, I started scanning rare articles by Edmond Roudnitska *and* started building the...

  Ah, I'm sentimental for the image I used on the old website. It was easy to visualize the international body of students gazing at this ;-) I forgot to announce that the class was full a few weeks ago, that we had reached the class limit on the number of students  and two additional students actually got in the door after that ;-) Very interesting students, too - a medical doctor from Germany and a former Marine now working in Kuwait. It's going to be a very exciting, fast-paced course, and everyone is gearing up for the professional experience of sharing and learning the wonders of natural perfumery. In this economy, I was wondering if the class would fill up. However, as one student wrote: "I took the time to research what instructors had recognition from bloggers and great reviews for their perfumes, and your reviews and awards stood out above the rest." That made me blush, but on reflection, she's right. Why study with somebody who hasn't made perfumes...

 A beautiful fanciful image of a tree with branches that form a heart,  rising up from deep roots. I was speaking with one of the wise women of perfumery the other day and she bemoaned the fact that today's crop of students, followers, enthusiasts -- whatever the term may be -- were so easily shedding any bit of acknowledgment of those who came before and helped them on the perfumed path.  I reminded her that this is not a current problem, because perfumery for centuries has been fraught with jealousy, corruption and all sorts of chicanery. So odd to remember my studies in university that the spice trade of old, herbalism and many other scented or healing arts are the same way. Remembering back to 1976, when I discovered William I. Kaufman's book Perfumery and the lush photos and history of perfumery and the -gasp!- essays by Edmund Roudnitska and Jean Carles, I can only smile at the great, fantastic strides that have occurred in this world, where artisan perfumery no...

I am posting this ad for Stratus Insurance, letting everyone know about the great deal they offer to the bath and beauty microbusinesses.  I was in negotiations with them for both the Guild and the 1800+ member Yahoo! natural perfumery group and the natural perfumery community at large.   They're offering great rates to the Natural Perfumers Guild, and some folks might want to join to save over non-Guild rates ;-) Don't forget we have a 20% off rate for Guild memberships until 11:59 PM February 14th. http://naturalperfumers.com/payment20.htm BTW, if you have a business that is not 100% natural perfumery, you can still join in the Stratus deal. I did negotiate on behalf of the NP community, but I realize many here may use fragrance oils or aromachemicals. You can still get this insurance. Just make sure you use this page to apply: http://www.stratusins.info/perfumers_app.php At the bottom of the page, if you're not a member of the Guild, check off if you are a membe...

  So What Variety of Orange Tree Gives us the Prized and Loved Neroli? The short answer is - nobody knows for sure, but it's pretty certain that it isn't soley the often named variety Citrus aurantium var. amara. I started this quest to find out what variety in my last blog post. I was trying to figure out why Citrus aurantium var. Bouquet des Fleurs wasn't named, since that was the variety I studied at one of the top citrus schools in the world. Turns out it's probably either/neither/a mix/or a bunch of others. I got feedback on a Yahoo group, and called UCR and spoke with one of the professors there. Neither source wanted to be quoted, since they're giving their opinion, and cannot point me to a source that will quote the facts. Due to their experience in the field, actually having visited neroli groves in several countries, I do accept their statements. Citrus hybridizes readily and oftentimes there are gaps in the groves due to a tree dying for a number of r...

A photo of the Neroli blossom Citrus aurantium var. Bouquet de Fleurs I posted this on several Yahoo groups today and I'm hoping to suss out the mystery of the proper name for the neroli tree: For years, I've questioned why C. aurantium var. amara was named as the source of neroli in all the aromatherapy (AT) books. I studied at a Citrus Research Center at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and two of my professors there were among the authors of the industry Bibles, The Citrus Industry Vols. 1-4. I was taught that C. aurantium var. Bouquet de Fleurs was the source of neroli. We had a beautiful stand of the small, rounded trees growing on campus. Early one Sunday morning, my husband and I went down the row, bucket in hand, vodka in bucket, harvesting as many flowers as possible. The tincture was heavenly! For years, however, in my dyslexic way, I reversed the name. I called it Fleurs des Bouquet, and I couldn't find any reference to it. I've since lost ...

Lemongrass plantation - Malaysia I've always been a dreamer and an optimist. Time to move forward with the project I touched upon in my last blog. Backstory: I dropped the ball in September of 2008 when I was scheduling a lunch with someone from the biggest vetiver distillation company in Haiti. That week, and the week following, huge storms swept Haiti, causing horrific flooding and loss of life. I figured to just back off as she took care of business, and I just felt superfluous to the problems they/she were facing, and lost contact with her. As I wrote recently, I'm going to direct efforts into reforestation efforts in Haiti, as soon as I can connect with a local agency. They're impossible to contact this week, but I'll keep at it. I'm also going to recontact my distillation connection for several reasons. I feel terrible I just gave up when faced with the situation in 2008. I guess I suffer from PTSD from all the hurricanes we get here in Florida, and ...

  After the Haiti Quake: Heal the Earth, Heal the People photo source: http://linknzona.blogspot.com/2008/12/environmental-quality-and-natural.html The Natural Perfumer is Not an artist 100% of the time,  they're a caring person 100% of the time: For me, our art is linked with our responsibility to the environment and other people. The image above shows the stark reality of the deforestation of Haiti in contrast to its contiguous neighbor, the Dominican Republic, to the right (east). The first thing that came to my mind when the horrific quake hit was that the people of the cities of Haiti can't flee the city for refuge in the countryside, because their countryside is bare, eroded earth. When it rains, and it will soon, those hills turn into mudslicks, and mudslides follow. Haiti has been plagued by mudslides for decades due to the systematic deforestation of the countryside. Thousands of years of topsoil, created slowly by the breakdown of the underlying rock ha...