THE BLACKBIRD NORTHWEST PERFUMERS CIRCUIT: BLOOMING DREAM

It was spring for a few days, and we all got spoiled. Then the cold and the rain came back again with a vengeance as bands of storms came through, darkening the sky and dropping the temperatures. It could be worse, mind you. When I say cold, I mean night and early morning temperatures in the low 40s F (5-10 C), not the snow that they’ve been having in places like Wisconsin, where I’m still waiting for the weather to warm up enough so that I can ship orchid plants safely. Some customers in the frozen north have been waiting patiently for their plants since December!

Last Saturday, after a short burst of rain and thunder, I headed to the April event in the Blackbird Northwest Perfumers Circuit. Featured perfumer Suzinn Weiss of Portland, Oregon, is a garden designer turned perfumer, so the transition from working with plants to working with fragrances seemed very familiar to me, and I was excited to smell what she had created. As I drove through the Seattle University District, I discovered that all the power was out, including the traffic lights, so the excessively polite Seattle drivers were all waiting at every corner of every intersection with no one moving. But Seattle driving habits are a topic for another day. 

[In the photo, from left to right, Suzinn Weiss, Christi Meshell, Eliam Puente, Ellen Covey, Mesha Munyan]

The lights were out all the way through Wallingford and into Fremont. As the lights came on again, I started noticing what looked like snow on the roofs and then on the grass. By the time I neared Ballard, there was deep slush on the road as well as everywhere else. I was not expecting snow in April! It turns out that what I saw was not snow, but an accumulation of hail from what people described as the longest, hardest hailstorm they had ever seen. It’s not unusual to get hail in Seattle in spring and fall, and it’s always the small variety, just a little bigger than sleet, usually quite localized. When it accumulates, it looks like snow.

Despite the horrible weather, there was a good turnout at Blackbird, where we munched on chips and dips and enjoyed a variety of wines provided by Wine World & Spirits. Suzinn ‘s fragrances are all-natural and really are reminiscent of the subtle gardening smells of cut fresh branches, leaves, flower petals, and herbs. I think my favorite was Pink Rose, a scent that features three types of rose, fir, vetiver, and oud but doesn’t smell at all like floral rose. I also liked Drunken Flower, which features notes of rose and cognac. Her creation for Blackbird, Blackbird Vert, was a citrusy green scent to honor the newly unfurled tender green leaves of spring.

Suzinn's fragrances will be on sale at the Blackbird Apothecary in Ballard through May 11, and she will also be at the Seattle Artisan Fragrance Salon on May 5, so if you’re in Seattle and missed the Blackbird launch of her fragrance line, you can smell her perfumes at Blackbird during the coming month, or meet her in person and experience her creations first-hand at the salon.

[Photos by Kathleen Brennan, Christi Meshell, and Suzinn Weiss, grabbed from various Facebook pages. As usual, I got involved in talking and forgot to take photos.]  

MY WEBSITE IS ONLINE!

This morning I managed to identify and fix all of the known bugs in the catalog. By afternoon I put the first trial website online. The url is http://www.orchidscents.com. I think it’s functional in all of the basic respects, but it does need to be tested to find whatever bugs remain.

If you would be willing to help me test the e-commerce system by placing an “order” for the test item that I have embedded in the catalog, you will pay one cent and I will send you a big package of items and samples as a thank-you for your testing and whatever feedback you provide. I will do this for the first 5 people who place a test “order”. After that, I’ll see what further testing is needed.

To find the test item, go to the website and click on “Fragrance” in the menu on the left of the home page. The test item is the last one on the list, and is identified by the same orange rose icon shown in the photo. If you “buy” it, you will be taken through the whole shopping cart procedure (I hope), and I will be notified of your “order”. I will then have your shipping information and can send you your goodie box. Any and all comments regarding the website will be appreciated.

I am excited to move on to this next stage of sharing my creations with the public.

CALAMUS ROOT

I like to try as many perfume materials as possible, not just because I like to smell new things, but because I never know where the next wonderful perfumery discovery will be. On this quest for new smells, I recently obtained some calamus root essential oil. Acorus calamus is a ubiquitous marsh plant known by the common name of sweet flag. The plant itself looks like a lot of other plants that grow in marshy areas. The flowers are strange spikes that look like an extremely fat ear of grain and not at all like the showy yellow flags (a type of iris) that I see growing all over marshy areas around here and blooming this month.

Ever since humans have been making fragrant products, the roots of Acorus calamus have been used in incense, perfumery, for medicinal purposes and, apparently, for their mild psychoactive properties. When I first smelled the oil, I hadn’t read much about it, and had ordered it more or less blind simply because it was unfamiliar. On the first inhalation, I immediately had a strange, lightheaded sensation that I have never had from any other essential oil. Repeated sniffing didn’t have the same effect - it seems there was rapid adaptation. However, after waiting a while, I can repeat the rush of smelling it for the first time. Fascinating. From what I’ve read, the psychoactive properties are supposed to require chewing and possibly ingesting fairly hefty amounts of the root and are questionable at best, so I really can’t explain the effect of sniffing the oil. The fragrance of the oil is light and sweet but at the same time a little nutty, a little bit bitter, herbal, and astringent, with an odor that is hard to describe in terms of other things because it is unique.

I’m sure that I will eventually end up making an all-natural perfume centered around calamus root oil. This seems like a worthwhile project for a number of reasons including the historical value of calamus in perfumery, the smell of the oil itself, and the odd effect that I find it has. Since I got my supply of calamus oil, I have been reading information on kyphi, an incense made by the ancient Egyptians, which used calamus root as one of the key ingredients. I think I’ll put all of the different formulas together and come up with a kyphi variation that takes the best of them all and adapts it to perfume form.

INDIAN SARSAPARILLA

One of the items that came in my latest shipment of natural perfumery materials was the SCO2 extract of Indian sarsaparilla. There are many different herbs that go under the name “sarsaparilla”. Hemidesmus indicus, also called “Indian sarsaparilla” is different from the ones traditionally used to flavor root beer or sarsaparilla, which belong to the genus Smilax. Hemidesmus indicus is a small perennial shrub that grows throughout nearly all of the Indian subcontinent. The roots are the part used to make the aromatic extract. Like Smilax, it is traditionally used as a tea or flavoring for medicines, cold drinks, and sherbet.

It was surprising to me that a search turned up almost nothing regarding the use of this plant extract in perfumery. However, there is a wealth of information about its medical uses. In Ayurvedic medicine it seems to have been used to treat just about every ailment that can be imagined, from skin diseases to fevers, arthritis, syphilis and the bites of poisonous snakes and scorpions. It is also reputed to be an aphrodisiac. This I can well imagine after smelling it.

When I first opened up the little silver tin that it came in, I was blown away by its sweet and heady smell reminiscent of rum-laced eggnog and vanilla flavored baked goods, only better. It is supposed to contain some of the same constituents as tonka beans, hence the vanilla-like note, but it contains many other aromatic compounds as well, making the scent unique.

Of course the wheels in my brain are turning, thinking about how to showcase this wonderful natural material in a perfume. After reading about it, however, I realize that this is one of those plants that, like sandalwood, run the risk of overharvesting natural populations and eventually being wiped out. Unless Indian sarsaparilla starts being cultivated commercially, I wouldn’t feel right using it in a perfume that was part of my permanent line, but now that I have a small amount of it, I will want to share it as a limited edition natural scent so that others can experience this fantastic creation of nature. Stay tuned for updates on the formulation of a new perfume using Hemidesmus indicus as the keynote material.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few natural materials that could be put in the sad category of “smell it now, before it goes extinct”. I don't want to get started on this topic, so will save it for another day.