Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

It's a late start today, not just because of the time change in the USA, but I'm just feeling lazy - which is much better than feeling stressed!  Ask away until 10 PM EST, USA, I'll be here on and off throughout the day to answer your perfumery questions.

Trygve Harris of Enfleurage sent me a series of photographs of frankincense trees from different locales in Oman.  Very intriguing are the ones she calls "Old Lady" trees.  Below are some photos of them, and a photo of some recently-harvested resin from them. Here's what she wrote about these Old Lady trees:  These trees are over the hill from the first pictures I sent. It's still humid--still gets the mist in the summer, but less so. It's protected. These are the Old Lady trees. These ones are strong and fierce   From her first frankincense newsletter, sent on Feb. 22, 2012:  Fresh and oozy Mughsayl (Black) frankincense from the coastal mountains west of Salalah. This is my personal favorite. If you are distilling your own, this is probably your best choice.   It's got a rich snappy sparkle, and glittering pinenes with just a dash of orange.   It's the one I'm talking about when i talk about the Old Lady Trees. ...

An aromatic group of spices before they are distilled and turned into essential oils.  As speices, they're related in smell, but still very different, and have different uses in perfumes.  You will learn how to systematically record the similarities and differences, which is critical to your perfumery education. Knowing how to conduct an organoleptic evaluation is critical for a perfumer.  You will use this foundation from the basic course for your entire career. You will learn how to look at, properly sniff and notate, in writing, what the aromatic oil is, both undiluted and diluted.  You will associate descriptive names and places with the oil to help build your scent memory.  In Module 1, the students learn how to evaluate single oils.  In Module 2, they move on to evaluate aromatic groups, thus broadening their recognition of related, yet different, oils.  Below is an image of part of the Module 2 organoleptic evaluation form.  It's prov...

There won't be a forum of Ask the Perfumer today,a s my priorities are elsewhere:  my mother has been in the hospital for three weeks, and now the hospital is discharging her, and the nursing hope is refusing her back, in a practice called "patient dumping", according to the hospital case worker.  Wish us luck!

Nothing is better than a good night's sleep, then walking out into the garden. The pink guavas are adorable, but the baby pineapples are cuter!  An heirloom tomato and smoked mozzarella makes a lovely breakfast.  Warm, breezy morning in Miami, and I'm enjoying every  minute of it.

Tonquin Musk and Sweet Birch - from Anya's Garden Perfumes Vintage Vault These Fritzsche bottles are very rare.  One perfumer told me the musk  one is museum quality due to its rarity and design.  I've also a suspicion that the Sweet Birch one contains the pre-IFRA really great salicylic-rich sweet birch that is the type that was used in leather fragrances such as Cuir de Russie.  I'm having some trouble getting the stopper out of the Sweet Birch bottle, but if you leave a comment, you'll be in the running for a half milliliter (enough for a sniff and a few applications) of the Tonquin musk.  There were some grains left in the bottle when I got it, and I rehydrated them, plus added a few musk grains of my own.  The comments must all be in by 11:59 PM Feb 28th.  Good luck!

Happy Sunday, Everyone! Enjoy the refreshing hyacinth visual as I enjoy my first Ask the Perfumer Sunday free of my stalker.  Yes, this blog, my websites and my Facebook page have been haunted for some time now.  Everytime I checked my stats, there she was.  I can't tell you the relief  I'm feeling.  I'll blog about that soon, as keeping a secret, hiding the abuse she heaped on me for years, only made the problem worse, and the stalking more creepy. I feel sort of reborn today, and I'm excited that I can post with such freedom.  Please send me your perfumery questions, as they keep me connected with the pulse of what is happening in your life, even if you are anonymous to me :-)  For almost ten years - ten years! - I have been at the nexus of the growing natural perfumery community, through the educational Yahoo group I host.  There, I have answered thousands of questions, freely and with lots of love. This public forum, where you can pick my b...

I recently blogged about all of the vanilla orchid flower buds on my vine.  They've been opening in the past week, and I admit I missed a lot of the blooms because of the ongoing hospitalization of my mother.  Also, I never got around to making the special paintbrush that I would have needed to hand pollinate them.  So today I'll just be sharing the tropical beauty of this flower.  Vanilla is the only species out of 20,000 orchid species that has a usable "fruit", the vanilla bean. You can click on any image to enlarge it. This flower is half open.  I like how the Jasminium officinale leaves are intertwined with the vanilla vine. This is a spent/unpollinated vanilla flower.  Isn't is similar in looks, if you look at just one segment, of an aged, glistening vanilla bean?

Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Arts is a lovely artist in two realms: graphic arts and fragrant arts.  I have written about her before, praising an incense warmer she sells which allowed me to experience incense again, since an allergy had not allowed me to "burn" incense.  Then I blogged about another gadget of hers, a vaporizer.  This little vaporizer allows the incense maker to quickly evaluate a new resin, wood or other material to determine if it has a nice fragrance for a blend. She is known for sourcing the most beautiful and rarest fragrance ingredients.  She was on a quest to obtain some Hojari recently, to replenish her supply, which goes into her incense and is also for sale on her website as raw material for incense makers. Here are some wonderful photos she shared with me of her recent acquisitions.  Oh, so wonderful!

The gloves are off.  Don't people understand when you back someone into a corner, try to destroy their businesses, and stalk them, there will be consequences? For Mandy Aftel and Carrie Meredith - Update - see below.  The stalker has a stooge.  Harsh words, but those who try to injure someone, and then keep poking that injured party, should be ready if the injured party - me - has had enough and outs them. Click to view - 433 visits from someone who tried to harm my businesses constitutes stalking. The blogger who was groomed by Aftel to do her bidding, and who instigated a boycott against the Guild (can you imagine such an act from someone who is on the Fragrance Foundation's Indie Committee?!) is checking my blog for Aftel, as Aftel did stop obsessively clicking here after the outing the other day.  These folks need to disappear from my life.  Please, just go away. The blog stat image of the stooge blogger is included, below. Carrie Meredith of Eye...

Cold Enfleurage - Vietnamese gardenias from Anya's Garden I recently blogged about production methods in the aromatics industry, and how important it is for students of the Natural Perfumery Institute to be knowledgeable about them.  A basic course needs to cover these topics so that the student perfumer will be able to converse and communicate intelligently and effectively about the sources of the aromatics used in our art. Vietnamese gardenia from Anya's Garden Many students, if ambitious, can extract aromatics from plant material, animal derivatives and soil themselves if they wish.  Here is a list of the topics covered in Module 2 of my textbook. 3.2:  Extraction Methods and Products                                               ...

A photo of the flowers of the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow plant.  Do you know why the plant is named that?  Do you know how many of them I have?  First correct answer wins a 15 minute consult with me for your perfumery question.  The consult will be over the phone or Skype.  Good luck! This is one of the busiest weekends in Miami, as it's the height of the "season" - tourist season.  The Boat Show, The Coconut Grove Arts Festival, The South Beach Food & Wine Festival, and many more.  Whew!  Time for us locals to stay close to home.  I met an old friend at the Hyatt downtown Friday night, and traffic, the lobby, and the entrance to the adjoining convention center were jam-packed. So as I laze around today - did I mention it's going to be 87-degrees Fahrenheit today?  - I'll only venture out to water some newly-transplanted scented plants like Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - I'll be available for your perfumery questions.

The aglaia tree in the front garden is in full bloom, the mimosa, too!  Yet, my heart is pulled to the shady area on the back fence, where my vanilla vine is budding out.  Probably due to the warm winter, the vine, which rambles in and out amongst three varieties of jasmines, is full of buds.  I've never seen so many on it, and I've had it 24 years!  I may succumb to the fantasy that I'll be able to pollinate the buds when they open.  There's a very specific way to bend a small paintbrush to reach inside.  I think it's angled to 40 degrees, and I'll have to check the specifics.  There is a moth that pollinates it in Madagascar and other regions where it's grown commercially, an I don't think that moth lives here in Miami.  I've also read how laborious it is to properly age and develop the vanillin in the beans once they are harvested.  DON'T look to eHow for any advice!  Mercy, how wrong they are on everything.  There are severa...

I wanted to post this answer I gave to an Ask the Perfumer reader as a separate blog entry for several reasons. 1) The questions raised a lot of interest in blog visitors.  My stats show that many came back today for the answer, which I couldn't provide late last night as I was tired.  2) It's critically important for a student to elevate themselves from hobbyist and use the tools that truly reflect a professional level of expertise. http://PerfumeClasses.com Hi JC: Wow, your question must have resonated with a lot of readers, as the "hit" count reached an all-time high for the Sunday forum, and I see many have returned this morning to see my answer. Let's say you're working with aromatics that are thick, like labdanum, or a concrete. You're also working with aromatics with a thin, watery consistency, like blood orange or lavender. A lot of absolutes are thick, and also quite pricey. The first things my student learns to do is to dilut...