Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Take a break from your fun summer (or winter, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere) activities and Ask the Perfumer your questions about any aspect of perfumery.

  Horst P. Horst: Lisa Hands With Vase and Flowers, 1941 I just love it.

I was looking for vintage aromatics on eBay, and came across the ad, below. I didn't save the image, so I googled and found the one above.   It seems that the firm of Magnus Mabee and Reynard was sued for adulterating their oils in 1914, and they lost.  The history of the herb and spice trade, and then the essential oils/absolutes/attars trade have historically been rife with adulteration.  I learned about this when as an undergraduate, completing studies in economic botany I found out that the word "sophistication" had its roots in this price-gouging, false-advertising practice.  From Dictionary.com:  so·phis·ti·cat·ed [ s uh - fis -ti-key-tid ]   adjective (after what you would expect, i.e., worldly), comes: 3. deceptive; misleading. and sophisticate - verb (used with object) 3. to make less natural, simple, or ingenuous; make worldly-wise. 4. to alter; pervert: to sophisticate a meaning beyond recognition.   Here's t...

Tahitian Gardenia Vietnamese gardenia The photos are of the Vietnamese and Tahitian gardenias growing in my front garden in Miami Shores.  I've been making enfleurage pomade from them, and it is heavenly!  I just added two new tiny varieties of the Tahitian gardenia to my collection - Heaven Scent.  They're double flowered! My co-author and I are in the midst of writing all the extraction secrets up for my book, Perfume From Your Garden.  We're at opposite ends of the country, so we'll have most growing zones covered. Today is Ask the Perfumer Sunday, and I'll be here until 10PM ET to answer your perfumery questions.

PRESS RELEASE:  June 14, 2012 (Miami Shores, Florida, USA) On June 14, 2002, natural perfumer Anya McCoy founded the Natural Perfumery group on Yahoo!.  She had several goals in mind: promote the ideals of 100% natural perfume; establish files, links, databases, archives and other materials that would establish a strong educational foundation for members; and hold standards of friendly discussion and respect for other's ideas paramount to maintain a helpful, sharing group. The group now has over 2300 members, and those goals have been met and surpassed. The Natural Perfumery group on Yahoo was founded on June 14, 2002 by Natural Perfumery icon Anya McCoy and is the largest perfumery group of its type worldwide. The group website health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NaturalPerfumery/ has been the center of the growth of the natural perfumery world during its dynamic grow...

I never can get enough of these tiny, highly-fragrant Aglaia odorata flowers!  They're blooming right now in hot, hot, humid Miami, and will bloom just about once a month. The Ask the Perfumer forum is open for questions until 10 PM ET today.  Any question about perfumery, from raw materials to making tinctures, supplies, etc., is welcome.

Tahitian gardenia in Anya's Garden My Tahitian gardenia plant is flowering like crazy!  It's in its second year and really taking off.  I just got two tiny Tahitian gardenia *double* flowering plants that will be in the ground soon. I'll be here until 10 PM ET tonight for any perfuming questions you have.  Stay cool - it's going to be way over 90F here today (Tahitian gardenia weather).

Fan carved from sandalwood Santalum album  -  even the botanical name is beautiful and strong. If rose and jasmine are feminine, sandalwood is strongly, sexily, masculine.  All male. And I fell hard for “him” from the first sniff.  Here’s my decades-long love/lust story, and I’m sorry to say it might not have a happy ending. Sandalwood Mala bead necklace I didn’t get my first bottle of sandalwood oil until I was 18 or so.  I already had some patchouli, as it was the scent of choice for hippies, and if I had some oils from the racks in hippie stores, they’re long forgotten, and I now know they were probably synthetic.  One day I was helping someone unpack some imported goods in the back of the store, and some of the merchandise was from India.  There were lovely colorful glass beads strung into necklaces that were woven from brass wire. Then I found a packet of scented wooden beads made into jewelry.  I’ll always associate the glass gr...

Ruffled, delicate Summerscent blooms Do you love the fragrance of blooming michelia or ylang ylang flowers?  Then you'll love this pretty flowering plant, sometimes called Summerscent or dwarf tree jasmie.  Radermachera kunming is a rare plant, not often found in garden centers.  It starts blooming when only 1 - 2' tall, and mine little plant in a pot is full of blooms and buds.  The sweet scent, and at least now, with it's first big summer flush of flowers, doesn't smell like jasmine.  It's much more like the piercing sweet floral fruity scent of michelia or ylang ylang flowers. It has large cluster of buds ready to open when the current flowers fade.  I'm going to start picking the flowers for enfleurage today. Summerscent is loaded with juicy buds ready to follow in a fragrant succession of blooms Seeing that it's native to Thailand, it is a tropical plant, and you either need to live in a tropical or subtropical area to grow it outside, or have...

 I'll be here for your perfumery questions until 10 PM EST.  In the meantime, here's an update on Little Frankie - Little Frankie out of the shipping box Dec. 2011 Little Frankie May 2012 So many fragrant flowers are in bloom here at Casa Jasmin!  A neighbor walking his dog stopped to mention the fragrance, and I pointed out several of the beauties responsible for scenting my street. But perhaps the sweetest victory, unscented, is the thriving health of Little Frankie, my frankincense sacra plant.  He arrived defoliated, looking like a sick little stick in December, and how he's sprouting out all over.  Typical of frankincense "trees" he's going to have a weird, twisted shape that is just fine with me.  I care about his health, and the wonderful chance to nurture such a rare historical plant. 

Get a cup of coffee or tea - this is a long blog post, with lots of twists and turns and surprises - good surprises!  Please see the blog post yesterday on the Guild member vote on the definition of natural isolates if you have not already read it. Backstory Do you ever wonder why I never taught a course in natural isolates or began to sell them on my website? After all, I was the pioneer natural perfumer who first used them in my MoonDance and StarFlower perfumes, both best sellers and award winners. Something told me that I needed to do a lot more research because a wrong move, the wrong isolate sold, could ruin the creations of lots of perfumes made by my (natural perfumer) customers. I have a duty as a trusted authority in natural perfumery, a person who heads the Natural Perfumers Guild, and who started a Yahoo discussion group on natural perfumeryin 2002, to be responsible and proceed slowly. Currently there are no regulations that address natural isolates, or ...

The Natural Perfumers Guild, the world’s largest organization for natural perfumery, is defining the scope of natural aromatics in accord with the vision of our art. Natural isolates are aromatics consisting of odor molecules from natural materials. Members voted on what constitutes a natural isolate to meet challenges to the "naturalness" of isolates. The Guild position serves to guide members and to assure the public of the Guild’s commitment to high standards of the art of natural perfumery. The Guild's standard exceeds ISO 9235, the International Organization of Standardization publication on standards for aromatic raw materials. Miami, FL, May 15, 2012 --( PR.com )-- The Natural Perfumers Guild, the largest organization of natural perfumers in the world, is defining the scope of natural aromatic isolates in order to assist its professional natural perfumers as they move forward with their desire to use these scent materials. Natural isolates ar...

I intended to write the backstory of the Guild's vote on the adopted definition of natural isolates today because of the press release going out today, but it's a huge post, and I need to proof it.  In the meantime, I wanted to offer you this eye candy of roses and their scents just for the sheer enjoyment of it. They're from Martha Steward magazine, and I found them floating on the internet.

I have a well-trained Scent Memory, and I provide my students at the Natural Perfumery Institute with the tools to link the nose, hand, mind via specific exercises and recording forms to train themselves. Scent Memory is a valuable tool! Here's an interesting story.  Hewlett Packard convinced a town in the USA to do without print for a week.  This experiment was also conducted in India and Singapore, and the two quotes from those locales are what surprised me.  The woman in Singapore though her perfumes smelled different when she didn't have the labels to ID them, and a man in India complained that his mother-in-law didn't cook for the week because she didn't know what spices were what! Yes, I would be confused in a supermarket if all the labels were removed - who wouldn't - but my sense of smell would definitely get me through the perfume confusion, as I have so many raw materials and perfumes committed to Scent Memory.  I wouldn't have any problems with...