Arctander is good for the imagination…

…I managed to get a copy of Arctander from Amazon awhile ago for substantially less than any of the other outlets claiming to offer a discount (I think it’s quite ballsy to call it a discount when you’re working your angle as the only gig in town for a reprint), and just wanted to note for posterity that if you are patient, and just visit your local public library or university library when you need to look up materials, eventually that used copy will pop up on one of the used book sites. And boy will you be glad you waited.

But I wanted to post about aromatics that few to none of us self-taught never even imagined existed at some time.

Case in point, mistletoe absolute. From Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, ‘…A very rare perfume material occasionally available is the Absolute of Mistletoe, known in France as Absolue de Gui. It is prepared by the usual two-step extraction from the leaves and twigs of Viscnum Album, a parasitic plant, quote common in central and southern Europe…

Mistletoe Absolute is a dark green, very viscous liquid of bitter-herbaceous, foliage-green, or rather green-bark type of odor. The dryout is sweeter and more pleasant…’ (p. 420)

Dude. Mistletoe? I had no idea.

On the other hand, one sees a lot of familiar face here. Muhuhu gets a mention, carob gets a mention, templin and deertongue get mentions.

But I’m still hung up trying to imagine the green vegetal bitterness of mistletoe, of course.

I miss my Cistus purpurea

When I moved in February, I left behind a huge shrub that’d started out as a wee 4-inch pot from a local nursery.  It bloomed like crazy all year, save the rainy season and when it got seriously cold.  And the cuttings were nice.

The BF gave it a haircut every year, sometimes twice a year, and I’d give away cuttings, dry leaves, tincture those, and generally have a blast imagining the Cistus ladanifer of southern Spain.  Purpurea is almost as fragrant.  On a warm day when the air is still, you can smell the sticky resiny sweetness of the stalks and leaves.  Lucy Fuzzbutterson had a thing for snoozing under the shrub in the sun although she learned to not rub against the trunk; for one thing it attracted insects to chase and stalk.

Alas, ‘Maxine’ (yeah, I name plants…) was too large to uproot and transport and transplant into the scant space that would’ve been available at the new abode.

So, I’m looking for another.  Ideally a ladanifer if I can find one.

ginger on my mind

When I picture a fire-breathing dragon, I tend to think of ginger from several angles.  Ginger is sweetness, spice, sharp edges that dull into almost cool surfaces, warmth, and fire in the belly.  And it’s one of those aromatics that is unmistakeable, much like cinnamon cannot be mistaken for any other essence.

And I worked with a great deal of ginger yesterday, the essential oil from fresh roots, and from dried roots, and then ginger lily CO2 extract, which is not a species of ginger, but has the definite dry heat like the EO from the dried roots has.  It glows red, and is faintly leathery and ashy, when you touch it up with the smoldering campfires of cade or choya.

Ignis is my ode to fire.  A blazing salamander out of Paracelsus.

mother’s day, and remembering

Mom’s been gone for 20 years.

There were a few things she liked, that still make me nostalgic when I smell them.  Windsong eau de toilette.  Devon Violets (this was something she started wearing when my great grandma was on the decline).  Plain lavender.  I remember her wearing patchouli when I was just a little kid, it was golden and floral and magical with her chemistry, but she totally disowned it when I was old enough to know about perfume, saying it was a part of her past best forgotten.  I never knew if she was referring to my dad, or her brief time in the hippie counterculture, or if it was just too painful thinking about how she wasn’t able to complete college during that era, or what.

I will never know if this is how she pictured my future.  And I will never know if she approves of my creative life.  I have a pretty good feeling she’d be okay with it, but she’d be kicking my butt to gain more momentum, and maybe I’d have enough of that by now to leave the IRL job and just pursue aromatics full time.

I’ve been toying with making something to commemorate her, for a couple years, but the time is never right for that.  It’s still not right.  Maybe in a few years.

The BF was supportive today.  He’s not in touch with his parents at all.  So, it was happy mother’s day to me, from the furkids (one of whom gifted me with a pre-holiday puddle of puke last night, when she inhaled some halibut too fast).

I dabbed on a bit of diluted gulhina attar and went about my business today.  Honestly, it’s just another Sunday.  I haven’t had a Sunday with mom for 20 yrs and 2 wks.

I miss you, mom.

Musk rose (hard to find, but worth it)

I was talking about using blue lotus phytol, a few posts down…

I also happen to have a small (okay, hoarded) quantity of musk rose phytol.  Rosa moschatus.

Because Circe is almost running low, I broke it out today to use in that perfume.  Musk rose is like rose petal preserves.  But it’s not marmalade like a solvent-extracted absolute is, and it’s not a shrieking steam-distilled otto (rose otto always makes me think of opera for some reason; it is a lot of sound and fury and mezzo soprano high notes, all in a teeny weeny little apothecary bottle!).

Warm, faintly spicy red and pink rose petals, more than anything else.  It adds a bit more texture and atmosphere than the Bulgarian Rosa damascena I use in Circe, or rather it seems to augment and strengthen it?  I am still deciding whether it is top to middle, or middle to base.

Orris, sweet and dusty orris

I went to Lise Manniche for an entry on iris this morning, because I felt like I was missing something in my appreciation.

“Varieties of iris grow wild in Egypt today; Dioscorides gave nar as its Egyptian name. Petals of Iris albicans Lange or I. florentina have been identified in an Egyptian burial of Graeco-Roman date, and the dried root could well have reached the country, this being the part of the plant that is used in perfumery (’orris root’). It was on Theophrastus’s list of aromatic plants.” (p.19, Sacred Luxuries [if you don't have this book, and you're a student of perfumery, find yourself a used copy...])

I’m riffing on violets currently. Orris is sort of a ’standard’ for producing a violet accord, in conjunction with essences that tease out its purple fruity petaled potential, like boronia. When I go to my orris absolute, it doesn’t quite spell ‘violet’ to me. The whole roots do, however. Either some judicious tincturing in grape alcohol is in order, or I need to work further on channeling Viola odorata, eh. Or, yes.

Gulhina, better with age

I’ve had about an ounce of gulhina attar for 4 years, and check in on it infrequently. I had to uncap and use a faint smidge when I made up another batch of Hekate recently, and it has really improved since I first got it. Maybe it was a relatively fresh attar in 2004?

Gulhina is made with henna flowers, Lawsonia inermis which are distilled into a receiving vessel of sandalwood, over a period of days.

When I first got my hands on this stuff, it had a dusty antiquated library book sort of bouquet to it. After some years, the flowery aspect is starting to manifest a bit. And it is dewy faintly bittersweet flowers.

We’ll just say this is the happy aromatic surprise of the spring, eh.

aromachology in action

I live near a steel mill.  For years, I had no idea one was located in town, because I’d never lived in the neighborhood near it.

It was the smell that I noticed, after some years.  And that’s another topic entirely, but the neighborhood associations are in a lawsuit w/ the mill because of the fumes, anyway…

The smell this morning, that was hanging heavy in the air like a storm cloud, was of floor wax!  And it was floor wax I’ve not smelled since I was 14, and walking through the lobby of the Berkeley Community Theater.  Here I am walking down the street and bam, it’s 1986.  I think it was the last day of summer, and all the new students were being herded into the lobby to prepare for the nightmare that was called ’self-scheduling’, back then.

I even remembered the smell of the mimeographed handouts the class counselors gave us.  I guess that makes it a two-fer?

(In the meantime, it looks like the neighbors have to keep a ‘nose out’ for hot floor wax odors, in addition to the burning pot-handle stink.  Gah…)

Nelumbo nucifera, the blue one

I’m working on expanding my palette of heart notes, and am starting to work, slowly, with a phytonic extraction of blue lotus.

When I first began working with the lotus flower absolutes, I was reminded of really dense and sticky confections, that had a hit of floral to them. And then I managed to procure some of the blue, and that ‘floral fudge’ motif went out the window.

Blue lotus pulsates. And it glows.

I never really grokked the whole idea of an aromatic spectrum where classes of scents are given corresponding colors and hues, so much as figured, ‘yeah, that’s another way to look at it…’ Not until I smelled blue lotus and realized that a scent can definitely have a color to it.

And that was the solvent extraction of the flower, I was smelling. I’m not really given to words like ethereal, but it fits in this case. Warm, blue, a slight shiver and tingle, and a glow. The strangest flower I’ve ever smelled.

Then I got a phytonic extraction of it last year, which was very different. Peter Wilde, the gentleman who invented the process for doing these special extractions, is said to have remarked that with every extraction method, you never get the orange itself but end up with marmalade. And then he started extracting in this fashion, and because the process does not involve heat, you definitely do get the orange. And in this case, the flowers.

Blue lotus phytol is a sultry afternoon up on the bank of a pond full of blooming flowers, where you can hear the insects buzzing, the air gets heavy and lazy, and you start to wonder if sunshine has a smell to it. And it is blue, as before, but in a decidedly aquatic and nearly ozonic way.

And darned if I can figure out a way, yet, to capture that without steamrolling the delicate scent with other aromatics! I’ve got five dilutions to work with, that’ve been aging since last year. I think we’re starting with a soft rose, as far as pairings go…

Hekate is back!

It’s been on the list of ‘things to do’ for a couple months, but Hekate is finally back in the lineup alongside Demeter.

I’m hoping to add an additional unguent or eau de parfum with blue lotus as a primary note in coming months. I particularly like what it does with rose and spikenard in Hekate.