Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Just a reminder to everyone - post your questions to me in this thread.

I created this graphic collage for Fairchild Perfume when it was released. When I remember back to 2005 and the resistance among perfumistas to natural perfumes, I can only smile at how we're being accepted now by mainstream perfume reviewers. As many on the forums say "I don't care now if a perfume is natural or contains synthetics, I only want a perfume to smell beautiful." Mark Behnke, who writes for Cafleurebon and Basenotes, and who has reviewed 500 perfumes in his career, is definitely someone who keeps an open mind about natural perfumes. I am truly awed by the power my first release, Fairchild, had over him. I'm so happy it brought back memories of walks with his father in Fairchild Gardens, which was the real world place I based this perfume upon. The other review on Cafleurebon today is by Rodney Hughes, a Professional Perfumer in the Natural Perfumers Guild. Rodney creates gorgeous perfumes himself, and imagine my surprise when he declared my...

Hi Everyone: I'll be here for questions about perfumery until 9PM EST USA tonight. I've had to put the blog on moderated comment status because of Chinese spam, so there may be a delay between your posting your question and me OKing it for the blog.

Karin of Savvy Thinker has reviewed two of my perfumes, RiverCali and Temple and she will be reviewing the rest over the next week. Thanks so much Karin. It sounds like Temple really reached you. It's my aromatherapy perfume, the only one in my line, created with the intent to calm, restore and bring peace to the wearer.

Hi Everyone: Hope you're all having a nice Mother's Day - and if you have an questions about perfumery, just post your question and I'll answer them.

Here's the solution for the perfume crossword of the other day. In the future, I'll try other ways to post the puzzle, maybe with the questions shown in a sidebar, or add the ability to print it out and work on it on paper.

Just a reminder to everyone - post your questions to me tomorrow, Sunday, May 2, 2010 in this thread.

...................when you have a head for perfume, it shows! My $5 score at an antique store today. She is officially Ms. PerfumeHead. Funny thing is I've been thinking about the phrase PerfumeHead a lot lately, probably due to the influence of Natural Perfumers Guild member Aromahead, and I just registered the domain. I guess I'll just build a fun little domain around her. Maybe stories of perfumeheads. Oh, I'm in a silly mood! FTR, she's 5" tall. Probably pewter. No labels on the base. Here she's vamping with some just-picked peach-scented frangipanis from the garden. I just had the background clipped out:

http://perfumeclasses.com/AnyaMod2puzzle.htm I created crossword puzzles for my students in the past, and I had a bunch of trouble with the program, so I stopped. I've just started them up again since I figured out the program, and this one, for Module 2, is a lot of fun! Perhaps the most ardent perfumista will get all the answers, but you may miss a few because they're specific to my course. Still, enjoy yourself, testing your knowledge of perfumery terms. http://perfumeclasses.com/AnyaMod2puzzle.htm as part of http://perfumeclasses.com

Click to enlarge and see the beauty of this morning's harvest from the front of the house at Casa Jasmin, where Anya's Garden Perfumes blooms under the tropical sun. I got this quick harvest this morning before the "big" storm hit, and I just beat it by minutes. The big mixing bowl holds about a gallon of liquid, but in other terms, there are 30 vietnamese gardenias in there (about 3" across for reference), several golden champaca flowers, and the tiny yellow darlings are Aglaia odorata flowers. Into the alcohol tincture for the champacas and aglaias, into the enfleurage tray for the gardenias. I'm so lucky! Oh, the bamboo skewer you see on the right was used to "pollinate" my vanilla orchid flower. Let's see if I get a bean. ;-) The vanilla orchid just started blooming, and I have to go out every day for the one flower a day on the vine to try to get a harvest by hand-pollination. It's fun!

Click the image of the batteuse that is used to agitate the pomade and alcohol  to enlarge it so that you can see the details It's 7:00 a.m., I'm off to get some coffee. When I return I'll be happy to answer your questions about perfumery in all it's aspects - raw materials, sourcing, blending, etc. Just post your question in this comments section. Adding this photo of a batteuse in response to a question about pomades.

  Oakmoss The other day I came across a blog entry on Nathan Branch's site, and despite trying to register and log in to post a comment, I couldn't. I wrote Nathan, haven't heard back yet, so I just want to put this out there because I feel there was such a misunderstanding of IFRA regulations a correction was needed. Seems Nathan received a lot of bottles of perfume to photograph for Abigail Levin's The Posh Peasant website. As he unpacked the box, his BF, in the next room, began to have respiratory distress. This continued until the bottles were packed back in the box and sealed.  Here is what I tried to post on the blog: Interesting theory, however, incorrect. IFRA regs cover possible skin-related issues (including oral preparations, such as mouthwash), not the respiratory system.  They also drift into the murky world of potential systemic problems, hence the completely incorrect stance against coumarinic raw materials. http://www.ifraorg.org/files/docu...

Happy Earth Day everyone.   I've celebrated this day since the first one, on Belmont Plateau, in Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia. Have we come far? I don't think so, but awareness is out there, more and more, but change is slow. I never thought we'd be facing new, different environmental challenges on top of the ones we had then. One constant in my life, earth-wise? I loved natural essential oils then, and I still do. I reject mainstream perfumes because of the environmental issues they cause with my body, and that I find them often "flat" smelling. I adore the richness and complexity of natural aromatics, from the flowers in the garden, the pine groves with their clean, fresh scent, and all of the natural extracts, from essential oils, concretes, absolutes, tinctures, CO2s  and more. Natural Perfumery truly seems to be a good outcome of environmental awareness and love of beautiful aromatic raw materials, blended with consciousness and intelligenc...

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...