Perfumery and kindred arts

A beautiful passage from Perfumery and kindred arts : 
a comprehensive treatise on perfumery 
by R.S.Cristiani
1877

"The Greeks, whose deities were as numerous as the stars, almost always associated perfumes with the presence of the gods and goddesses, and attributed skill in the compounding of perfumes to the marvelous, and gave the name of magicians to those who prepared them.

Venus is described as sprinkled with perfumes, and Pallas (Athena), the goddess of wisdom, anointed with oil when practicing the exercises of the palastra, and to their use is attributed the great beauty of Helen of Troy.

Perfumes were generally supposed to possess great medicinal virtues, so much so as to cause the recipes for many of the most celebrated essences and cosmetics 
to be inscribed on marble tablets in some of their temples. The rose in those days was considered no less beneficial than beautiful, and formed the basis of many remedies."

Sunday Perfumery

When I make perfume I like to listen to Joanna Newsom. She's odd & quirky and her singing makes me get into a zone that is perfect for listening to the essence of smell. That probably doesn't make sense but it works for me.
However, Joanna Newsom is not the most appropriate retail background music and we are retail even if I am geeking out in the back room.

Today, Sunday, I went in with the intention of working on a blend that I have been thinking about and tinkering with for a good long time, something along the lines of two years, in fits and starts.
In all that time, it has been with me, all of the scents that I dream up live with me. I carry them around like so many small children.
Perhaps that's why Joanna Newsom is so right for the work. She is the perfect serenade for so many small aromatic and at times slightly vexing children.

Today the store's computer crashed and the computer guy (my guy) was fixing that up and Sadie was covering my shift so that I could try to get this blend made up and even with all of the chaos I just gathered my ingredients and started blending. And figuring.
As I always say: "it's mostly math". Don't fool yourself. The magic of perfumery is totally there, but if you don't keep very diligent track of every tiny detail, it's a one time thing.
If you want to recreate something, even if it is just to change it, you have to mark down the measurements and the source of each oil and so on and so forth.
As I was dropping aromatics into tiny beakers, there was a moment in which I was questioning Sadie's choice of music and a split second later I was reminded as I often am of the perfect match of all the lovely people who work and help at Flora and how amazing it all is and how it always works out. Sadie had chosen for this Sunday at high noon none other than Joanna Newsome. Perfect.

The perfume, you ask? Yes, of course.
The blend is in two at this point or it is two separate scents. I am not quite sure.
They are similar and have a kindred nature, but they are each their own distinct selves.

I was going for a masculine scent. One that is warm and rich, that will give comfort and be sexy all at the same time.
I love the femmy scents of rose and jasmine but I also love the earthy and deep vetivert and oak moss.

One of the images for the scent is of campfires, open sky and dusk falling.

I was imagining what an iconic masculine scent would be and I thought of my dad.
The scents that I remember most about him are cigarettes, sawdust and coffee.
My dad was a man's man, whatever that means and the scent I am going for evokes a past that is reminiscent of an ideal.
This is the scent of the Marlboro Man or Don Draper or the dream of being a little more manly than you really are, or of bringing out something hidden in you.
Cicero wrote "A man's chief quality is courage."

The scent has dignity and strength and it smells great on women as well.

One of the scents is a bit sweeter than the other and we are tentatively calling it "bandito nights"
The second is darker and moodier and tentatively named "Middle Earth"

My brother and sister-in-law came into the store later in the day and my sis-in-law asked about the scent on the counter. I let her smell it and she swooned. She had my brother smell it and he seemed surprised by how much he liked it.
She wanted to buy some for him. It was just the in-store tester that we were playing with and trying to set a name to. But what could I say? I poured half of it into a bottle for her to take home.
Even though I didn't give them the story behind the scent, it seems fitting that my brother is gifted in a magical way with a scent inspired, at least in part, by our dad.

Guest Blog from Julia Montes

Upon opening the door into Flora, lovely high notes of rose rush over me, causing a smile to stretch across my face.

I know exactly what that means- Jewelie is making perfume today.

Sure enough, Jewelie is standing behind the counter holding the tiniest beaker I’ve ever seen and mixing its contents with a look of absolute concentration. I have barely made it through the door before she beckons me over. “Smell this,” she insists and holds a mixing stick out for me to sniff as I approach the counter. I take one full cleansing breath before leaning over to experience the scent she has just created. Pulling back, I wait a moment before responding, savoring the scent the way one does when experiencing the first taste of fine wine or expensive chocolate. Once again, Jewelie has blown me away with her ability to blend seemingly opposing scents into a magical concoction. The perfume is lovely- woodsy, with hints of citrus. Jewelie waits for my response but I can’t actually say anything, I simply smile and nod my head in admiring approval.

Finally!

The perfume box set is launched

Loveliest Perfume

I wish you could smell this.








It's a deep, warm, glowy rosy amazing solid perfume.
The main notes are rose and chamomile with hints of old wood and forest moss.











Here is the amazing sterling silver compact the perfume was made in.

The scent is completely plant based.
The real thing, through and through.
We were sad to see it go.
xo

Extra Sensual Perception

Extra Sensory Perception
"extra special powers"
There's a Japanese girl band that sings this amazing song, called ESP and upon searching it out, I found that apparently lots of people have songs about ESP.

My older daughter was in class last year and a teacher asked the students if they knew what ESP stood for and my daughter very confidently said "extra special powers".
Everyone stared at her like she must be joking and then she realized that her words did not align with the group. She came home a bit embarrassed and asked about it.
It's just the way that her mind rearranged the words to the Shonen Knife song that she's been
singing along with since she was a little girl.
And because of that, it's how we've always referred to ESP at our house.

I've been thinking about the way in which people perceive things, the way that I perceive things may not be the same as the way you do, but that does not mean that what one person sees/hears/senses makes the other person's perception wrong.
The other day as I was driving I had a sense that we had driven ahead a few blocks and had re-wound, if you will, and started over. I asked my older daughter who was in the front seat with me "were we just up ahead at the next light and came back here to start over?" She paused, thought about it and said, "that's not how it seemed to me". She, as my daughter is open to the possibility that reality is all about perception and that it was possible, if not improbable that it was a reality. Time is not linear. Space is not finite. We can intellectualize it, but the belief in ourselves, the trust we allow ourselves to experience things outside of normal perceived acceptable reality is a leap of faith. One must have courage to see things that others do not. One must have faith in life and belief in oneself to see outside an agreed upon limited reality.

I rarely end up where I set out, but these are the words that want to be written.

I was intending to write about the way in which our senses guide us, how each of us is ruled by certain senses. Some of us use our sense of sight, or touch to guide us through life. I know a girl who smells everything before she eats it and smells every ingredient before she cooks. I saw someone the other day in a clothing store who touched every single item she passed.
Some people need eye contact or they cannot have a conversation.
Our basic needs are sensual
sen·su·al
Etymology:
Middle English, from Late Latin sensualis, from Latin sensus sense
Date:15th century
Really, sensuality is just about connecting with our senses and yet, our culture has demonized our most basic human needs; to connect and feel, to see and touch, to taste and smell and so on.
1: relating to or consisting in the gratification of the senses or the indulgence of appetite :
a: devoted to or preoccupied with the senses or appetites
b: voluptuous c: deficient in moral, spiritual, or intellectual interests : worldly; especially : irreligious (Irreligious? what? being religious means having no sense?
this makes no sense.)

I feel like Oblio in the Pointless Forest.

What is your primary sense? Your secondary sense? What sense do you feel disconnected to?

As a perfumer I like to blow open olfactory sense perception.
To allow people to have their minds blown wide open through their sense of smell. You can never be the same once you've connected to your deep, ancient, visceral connection to the world of scent.
Julia, my assistant and many of our customers have never liked the scent of rose oil, until they've experienced one of the true Rose Ottos or absolutes that we have at the store. Now Rose is the favorite, the dream, the ideal. The sensual connection to something from the past and maybe not even their own past.

What is your favorite smell?

A dear friend of mine sent me one of these get to know you better e-mail disasters and because as I said she is dear to me I sent it back to her (only her, no more forwards). One of the questions was: What is your favorite smell? I knew right away my answer, but had to decide how honest I would be and tried to come up with a "better" answer. I love Roses in the rain, I love the way the sidewalk smells after a rain, I love the smell of band-aids, I love the smell of old books, I love the smell of puppies, I love the smell of babies necks, I could go on and on. Obviously smell is one of primary sensual connections.
The real answer is that I love the way my loved ones smell, when unadorned by deodorants and washes. I love real people smell.
My friend, the forwarder, replied that she hadn't thought of it, but that was really her favorite scent as well.
I remember when my younger daughter at age 10 had come home and said that someone had suggested she use deodorant and would I buy her some. It was hard for me to imagine my baby girl needing to mask her self in this way and so we talked about it and she said that the person had said she had "body odor" - she squinched her nose up while repeating the words as it must have been modeled to her. I said yes, you do have body odor, it's a body, everything has an odor, it's a smell, not a poison.
We are asked to look and smell the same, to be nice, to be fine and we are expected to mask our own real scent.
I'm sorry, but it's not ok with me.
I did buy her some low scent organic deodorant and if she wears it that's up to her, but I like the way my friends and family smell au natural.
We're hard-wired to smell anger and love, desire and distrust. It's part of the ESP picture, the masking of scents is a way for us to get mixed messages, for us to be confused by false information to not trust our instincts.
Let's do away with so much scented laundry detergent, dish soap, room fresheners, deodorants, chemical perfumes.
We have to use other cues, to open our senses to fully live in our own skin, to see the world. To be in the world.

Tonight Julia and I went out to Toro Bravo for dinner and I speak for both of us when I say that our taste buds were blown open. We ordered many amazing little plates to share, but the bacon wrapped, blue cheese stuffed figs were transcendent. Julia said it was the best thing she had ever put in her mouth. We had a hard time considering anything else that could follow such a taste. We sat in awe of the simplicity and complexity of it for some time before deciding that we could have a drink of Sangria as a transition to the next plate.

While I was enjoying delightful food and conversation I checked out those around me, took in what I could of their story, I opened my senses to what they were telling me, telling everyone around them. With their body language, the food they chose, the colors they wear, the companions they are with, their voices and all the minutia of human-ness. Being perceptive is a drinking in of the world, a tasting, a smelling, a hearing.

Go ahead, be psychic, you already are, just pay attention, drink it in and enjoy your life.

xo

Green

I'm in an anthroposophical study group in which we are looking at the relationship between art and spirituality. We are a diverse group that has met once a week for almost 3 years.
Color comes up often. We occasionally do experiential art exercises and a year ago last spring we discussed doing exercises based in the experience of color.
One color at a time.
It should be noted that in Waldorf Art in the lower grades the children begin painting not to create art but to have an experience with color. They get one color at time with only water to expand or contract the color. They just experience the one color. Next week another color. It is unsatisfying for some parents as their children bring home not a sweet house with chimney and a bit of smoke but a page of Blue. In our product over process culture this leaves a bit to be desired and sometimes confusion for parents.
But once you've painted just blue for 3o minutes you understand the Blueness of it and as you use color in the future your singular color experience will have deepened your connection to and your understanding of the interconnectedness of all colors.
Our group is comprised of artists. A potter, sculptor, painter, puppet maker, book arts guru, basket weaver, blacksmith and herbalist? Yes I am the one who is not quite like the others and yet it works. When we were talking about the color exercise we considered how to as adults have a singular color experience and I had a moment of inspiration in which I wanted to create a scent that evoked a color and as we worked our way through the colors one by one I would challenge myself to create a scent to match the color.
This stewed and brewed within me and I, in my overly busy life had to let this one "extra" thing go.
Then on a day last winter when the store was so busy and I was about to feel sorry for myself that no one was coming in AKA I'm a failure and no one loves me. (Pity is not pretty I know.) I adjusted my outlook to one of: I'm so lucky to have my own store and I will act is if I'm in a little girl's fairy tale dream of having a perfume store. (It's all true, I just needed to look again.) And with that I decided to "play". I spent the rest of the day playing around with essential oils, absolutes & waxes and made some little tins of perfumed balms.
I had a great afternoon and amazingly the scents were all wonderful.
I came back to them over time and had customers smell them and I thought about them occasionally.
One of my favorite customers loved a spicy-citrus one and asked me to make some for him so I did.
Time passes. Months.
I find some adorable little balm containers that I just have to have. I buy them and wonder what I can put in these little things. I begin experimenting to find a product to go in them. Just for fun because the containers are so darn cute.
During this time I am trying to create a line of teas under the io brand and even though I have been blending teas for more than a dozen years it was just too big of a project to succeed at as a store owner and manufacturer working mostly alone about 45 hours (minimum) a week.
Blah, blah blah.
More time passes.
Last week my friend Tom was over and I was showing him my new perfume. It's green, the container is green and the scent evokes green. Tom says "you did it, you made the smell of green."
Wow, I had forgotten about that so long ago inspiration from the art group and here we were more than a year later with a tiny green fruit of my labor and inspiration.

P.S. there is more exciting news coming soon about the scents (yes plural.)
I'm so excited!
xo

Loss, moving on, catching up

A few months ago, my dad, who had been suffering from lung cancer that had moved to his brain began going downhill very fast.
He had been at death's door for the past 4 & 1/2 years while remaining hopeful, funny, charming and strong.
During this last bad patch I spent most of my energy trying to decide if I should be with him, driving to be with him, or just trying to cope with losing my dad, while still doing all of the things one must do as a mother and store owner, and the: what if it's like all the other times and he pulls through? and the: can I close my store that I just opened to go see him even though he may not even know I'm there?
It was a terrible and incredibly sad time. He did pass and the devastation, even though we were "prepared" for his death, it did not and does not make it any less devastating.
I have been trying to "catch up" which is what people do. What we are expected to do. But life is not linear, at least mine isn't and I've been working through the reality that I cannot just catch up on the weeks that I fell behind on, but that all the pieces of my life are new again and I need to re-frame and re-evaluate and not make things happen but to make assessments as needed without assumptions based on past experience.
How do we re-create ourselves in small indescribable ways while keeping on with the grocery shopping, bill paying, bed-time stories and walking the dog?
Just by staying open and not assuming anything and not taking on too many new things, or any new things.
For me it has been a time of relative seclusion. I say relative because I work retail and am out in the world every day, but the way in which I am in the world is more inward, a bit fragile, but in some ways very powerful because I am not diffusing my energy by chatting with everyone about this personal experience. It makes me wonder what I am doing right now, writing about it, but it's been over two months now and I am feeling at a transition.
The ways in which it has impacted my work as an herbalist and shop keeper is profound and subtle.
Just before my dad started going down hill I had taken on 5 new perfumery clients and had done the initial intake interview the week before.
This has been the most pressing thing for me to catch up on. All of those who are much delayed getting their first perfume samples are amazingly understanding.
It would have been a great disservice to them to make a quick perfume in my grief and in my responsibility to get a "product" out to them.
I am back in the swing of things in some ways/on some days and when I'm not, I make no products.
I just be.
I know this sounds incredibly "be here now" but really, it is profound and difficult. The older I get the more profound it is.
This is the point at which you are either thinking "yeah, me too, I so get that" or "what a freak, I'm never reading this blog again".
Either way, one day you will have the moment when just "being" seems profound.
Life is swirling around us at a frenetic pace and my work right now is to not rush in and try catch up, my work is to just be in the moment.
xoxo

Botanical Perfumery

The process that I go through to create a natural perfume is one of mystery, even to me.
I may wake up with an idea or dream of a blend when I have been stuck in the light of day. I sometimes make amazing mistakes that are fabulous.
Some of the most well thought out processes make the most terrible scents.
I love to explore and experiment with the gads of essential oils, absolutes, concretes, resins, waxes and butters that I have on hand.
People who walk by my store often assume it is a spa. I understand, it's modern, beautiful and there is a curtain to who knows where. This is where it is assumed you can get a facial or a massage. Brilliant really. It was a hope I had while looking for a space, to have it big enough for both a store and a spa, but no. The back room is part office and part blending studio. I make a fair number of my products right here in the shop. Talk about local.
The only service I offer is custom perfumery. This is a before or after hours service that is one on one. I ask a lot of questions and you (we'll pretend I am making it for you) get to smell tons of scents. Some blends but mostly single notes.


It takes about 90 minutes, we drink tea and get into the scents and I take a lot of notes.
It used to be closer to 60 minutes, but I keep getting more oils and I want to have a chance to step outside and get fresh air every now and then. It has been overwhelming for a couple of folks.

After our initial meeting I will go over my pages of notes and create some ideas for recipes and work on them for a week or so. Letting them rest, tweaking, going back over my notes and so on.
When I feel I have captured the perfect essence of what you are looking for and what will match you, taking into consideration any things that need treating on an aromatherapeutic level. Anxiety, depression etc
This takes (for me) being in a particularly good and even space.
I am re-membering our time together, re-creating a feeling that is the intention of the scent and crafting out of botanical materials.
I generally can have 3 folks at a time that I am working on, but I had a very busy week a couple of months ago and I had 5 appointments in one week.
I had a pretty open following weeks so I thought it would all be fine.
Sadly there became a pressing family issue for me to attend to and I became very behind with my perfumery.
My perfumery clients have been incredibly patient & kind and I am finally in a space to begin this work again.
My assistant, julia the beautiful, keeps reminding me of the other products in the store that we are low on or out of. Yes, I know but this is where I'm at. I'm working on these scents and it's nice.
I have sets of initial scents for 2 of the 5 clients and a good direction with the 3rd, so I feel good about that.
I have one client who was worried that I couldn't make something for her because about 75% of what she smelled she didn't like. I think she was worried that she was being "difficult", I hope not, I found her charming and hilarious.
I had another client who liked the scents that I do not.
I can't say it isn't challenging, but I do enjoy the process.
We'll see how they like them.
xoxo