WEDNESDAY MATERIALS: ELEMI AND A GIVEAWAY

One thing leads to another. Last time I wrote about galbanum, and that post leads to other resins, so what I think I’ll do is go through the resins that I use or have in my collection of things I might use.

Elemi comes from a tree called Canarium luzonicum, which is native to the Philippines. It belongs to the family Burseraceae, which includes frankincense, myrrh, and other resin-producing trees, some of which I am trying to grow in my greenhouse.

Apparently a number of different resins have been called “elemi”, over the years, including those from other Burceraceous trees and shrubs such as Boswellia and Icica species, so it is not clear what sort of “elemi” was the one reputedly used for incense, skin care, and embalming in ancient Egypt. It seems unlikely that the Egyptians visited the Philippines to obtain Canarium resin when sources of Boswellia (frankincense) and Commiphora (myrrh) were closer to home. 

Canarium trees grow quite tall, and are attractive with their canopy of broad leaves and almond-shaped nuts. The resin is most plentiful during the rainy season, and trees are “tapped” then by making cuts in the trunk. The resin is steam distilled to produce elemi essential oil. Elemi oil has antibacterial and antifungal properties as well as a good smell, so probably functions as one of the tree’s defense mechanisms.

Elemi, although resinous, has a light, clean lemony-green scent with resinous nuances. This is not surprising given that limonene makes up more than half of the constituents of the oil. Alpha-phellandrene is the other major constituent, along with elemol and small amounts of other molecules, including alpha-terpenol, alpha-terpenolene, sabinene, and elemicin. Alpha-phellandrene is also a citrusy odor, so it is the resinous-woody elemol and spicy-floral elemicin that gives it that little extra resinous something that makes it elemi.  Incidentally, all of these components are available as pure aroma chemicals, so it should be fairly easy to come full circle and re-design a synthetic version of elemi if one wanted to do so.

Elemi is a good go-to oil if you want fresh, green, slightly resinous top notes in a perfume. I used it in Blackbird and Bat to provide a clean resinous note from the beginning, and will likely use it in many more compositions.

Do you like resinous notes in perfume? Which resinous notes and/or perfumes do you enjoy most? Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing for a 5-ml spray bottle of Olympic Orchids Blackbird along with some other miscellaneous surprise goodies. 

[Canarium tree photos are from the University of Southern Illinois Phytoimages pages; resin and Canarium tree-tapping images from retailers' websites; Blackbird bottle photo is mine.]

PERFUME AND WRITING: GUEST POST BY AZAR

Last week I wondered what to do to replace the Monday review feature, and had the idea of "interviewing" people who write about perfume from many different points of view and in many different types of venues. Azar is almost a neighbor, and a good friend, so I asked her to kick it off because I knew she could write something quickly. Here is her post!

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Why review perfumes?  I've been wondering about that lately. I certainly don't do it for money or even for free fragrance. As an amateur guest contributor with no blog site of my own, I receive no press samples or other industry perks.  Occasionally, a few comps or gifts of scent come my way via friends, perfumers and fellow bloggers.  I tend to review these fragrances before others, but consider my reviews strictly a hobby.

Like any hobby, writing perfume reviews can be more costly than anticipated. I "pay as I play" with time and money, part of my entertainment budget. Believe it or not, it can take several hours to sniff correctly, search a back-story and edit information and impressions into 500 words or less.  Hard cash is also laid out for decanting supplies, packaging and the outrageous postage required to send prizes to international destinations. Am I purchasing attention or approval by paying for the "privilege" to sound off about products that already receive more than their fair share of paid advertising?  Perhaps, but there are better reasons why I review perfumes.   

First of all, I am fascinated by everything related to the experience of fragrance, both in nature and from a bottle.  I have an extensive collection of perfumes dating from 1930 through 2016, years as an enthusiastic consumer and a pretty good memory for scent.  I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but, from time to time, I do have something to say.

The second reason is probably the most telling.  I write perfume reviews simply because I love to play with words.  Decades before personal computers, search engines and apps, during my high school days, I was a member of the National Forensic League (now entitled the National Speech and Debate Association).  This NFL was just as competitive as the other one!  My favorite league competition was the "extemporaneous speaking" event.  Participants drew three current topics and were instructed to choose one.  We were allowed 30 minutes to research piles of periodicals and then 7 minutes to give a coherent, logical, informative presentation, without any written notes, subject afterwards to questions and criticism.  Ex-temp taught me that, with correct, concise preparation I could talk (BS?) convincingly, about almost anything. I also learned that a presentation could fly or flop based on the placement of a single word. My ex-temp skills also enabled me to write with confidence, on demand, about any subject, interesting or otherwise. 

These days, playing with words is an excuse to indulge in my fragrance addiction (or is it the other way round?).  But there is a more compelling reason that I continue to write about scent - the perfume community I've discovered online.

Writing posts for Perfume Project NW and Australian Perfume Junkies has introduced me to an entire new circle of friends, intelligent, literate perfume pen pals from around the world with similar interests but very different viewpoints and preferences. I love reading their posts and sharing opinions and comments.  Writing reviews has changed my world, opening it up in so many ways.  Every day I learn something new, not only about perfumes, but also about gardening, cooking, entertaining, traveling and living!

Azar xx

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I have to agree with Azar that talking to people about perfume has resulted in many wonderful friendships and interactions, and I'm grateful for all of them!

[Vintage perfume ad and debate poster from Wikimedia; Woman writing by August Mueller 1885; conversation image by Petrona Viera, early 20th century]

THE FUTILITY OF ASSIGNING PERFUME “QUALITY”

When I suddenly phased out my Monday review feature, I felt like I had to replace it with something. I thought of interviews with other perfumers, but decided that those had been done enough on other blogs. Right now I am in the process of trying to bootstrap a new feature that requires recruiting of other writers, but it will take at least a few weeks to get it going.

In the meantime, I am motivated to reflect on the current state of perfume reviewing, which seems to be taken far too seriously by far too many people on both sides of the aisle. Today’s rumination was a long time in the buildup, but the final straw prompting me to comment was Luca Turin’s post announcing that his four stars no longer mean four stars; in fact, they are actually an artificially inflated sop thrown to artisan perfumers whose work is, by his definition, inferior in quality to those perfumes to which he assigned four stars in the Perfume Guide. I must confess that I have never looked at the Perfume Guide and do not understand why one person’s subjective opinion should be regarded as the ultimate truth. I understand even less why Luca Turin feels the need to apologize to another blogger for his reviews and his rating system.

I can see the point that the trend of  bloggers to only say good things may not ultimately be in the best interest of anyone. First, this tendency may lead consumers to regard all reviews as insincere, negating the usefulness of the reviews and casting reviewers in the role of paid shills who collect free perfume in exchange for promoting it. I do not believe this, but the danger of such a perception by the public is real.

Second, it leads to the idea that perfumes that are written about constantly have high merit and those that are not written about as much must necessarily be inferior. The consequence of this perception is potentially damaging to those brands and perfumers who are not highly active in releasing a constant stream of new perfumes and distributing samples to bloggers. Damning by not mentioning a perfume could ultimately be worse than damning by faint praise or negative comments.

Third, the idea that perfume “quality” can be quantified and that there is a single standard for excellence is absurd. Evaluating the quality of a perfume is not like solving a simple mathematical equation where there is (usually) one right answer. Every individual has his or her own unique biology, history, and preferences. My scrubber may be your holy grail and vice versa. Evaluation of perfume is ultimately subjective, and reading a variety of opinions is valuable as well as entertaining, especially when reviewers do not pretend to be the ultimate authority on what is good for everyone. Perfume reviewers are like the blind men and the elephant, with each seeing something different from his or her own unique point of view. In the end, “each is partly in the right, and all of them are wrong”, but that’s not all. In the end, there is no coherent elephant to reconstruct from the parts. Perfume “quality” is in the nose and brain of the beholder. It's unique for each individual and even for a given individual it's a moving target.  

If people in the perfume community try to come up with a monolithic definition of “quality” as an ultimate “truth” and use it to implement a simplistic one-dimensional quantitative rating system of zero to five, they will end up like Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, insanely sitting in a corner in a pile of their own excrement, beating their heads against the wall as they try in vain to capture an aesthetic and intellectual will-o-the-wisp and define the undefinable.

Back off folks, perfume should be fun, and so should writing and reading about it.

[Inflated pufferfish and inflated balloons images from Wikimedia; Robert Pirsig photo grabbed off an internet search; red balloon painting by Paul Klee, 1922; blind men and the elephant illustration by an anonymous artist, early 20th century; blind monks and elephant image by Itcho Hanabusa, 18th century; foxfire image by Toyohara Chikanobu, 19th century] 

MONDAY FLORALS GIVEAWAY WINNER

The Monday Florals giveaway winner is

PATS

Please send your shipping info to olympicorchids at gmail dot com.

That was the last of the review posts and has now been removed. I assume that with this last action the blog has been thoroughly purged of all reviews and I can get a fresh start on a new Monday feature.

[Gratuitous bumblebee pic is mine]

NO MORE REVIEWS: A SHORT HISTORY BEHIND THE DECISION

In life, everything evolves. Ever since I can remember I have always tried to get samples of as many fragrances as possible, and have tried to test one or more every day. I started out doing this simply because I enjoyed it, and eventually continued to do it because I felt like I needed to know what was going on in the perfume world outside my studio, so it was not only fun, but educational. Whenever I tested a perfume, I wrote notes to myself about it. I have a huge archive of these notes from over the years stored in digital form.

Before I started making my own perfumes, I used to post reviews on Fragrantica on a fairly regular basis. Soon after my business started to take off and I started this blog, I stopped posting reviews on Fragrantica, partly prompted by a colleague’s complaint that my modest praise was actually a condemnation, and partly because I now had a new platform for my reviews.

A few companies started sending me samples to review, and I happily did so. A couple of years ago I made it a rule to review only what I considered mass-market perfumes because reviewing the work of artisan or small independent brands with limited distribution could be perceived as a conflict of interest. In the meantime, the lines among categories have become progressively blurred, and as I’ve become more generally known as a perfumer my degrees of separation from colleagues have become ever-smaller and more intricately enmeshed.

I have been surprised several times to find that one of my old reviews or posts is the first item that shows up in a Google search. Unfortunately this increased visibility has started to attract vitriolic comments on some review posts as well as spammers who vainly hope that readers of the comments will click on their links. I don’t need this.

The fact that one never really knows where a perfumer’s work will show up means that I could unknowingly write an honest review of a colleague’s work and only discover the direct or indirect connection later. For better or worse, I have reached a point where everyone in the perfume community is my colleague. The danger of creating a conflict of interest is too great to take that risk. 

For that reason, if you look at my blog today you will see that I have gone back and deleted all perfume reviews (at least I think I got them all). I will no longer post reviews of any type, but will continue to do giveaways. Instead of Mass-Market Mondays there will be some new feature associated with a giveaway. I haven’t decided what it will be, but it will definitely be something meant to promote engagement and constructive discussion. I welcome any ideas about a regular feature you would like to see here.

[All images are by M C Escher]