SAN FRANCISCO PART 3: THE SHOW

So now comes the big day. Our rolling suitcases have been emptied of clothing and personal effects, and filled with perfume bottles and display items. After a cup of the bad coffee that’s provided in the hotel lobby, we set off through the gray, cold morning, pulling our suitcases behind us. Once we arrive at the Gallery 4N5, we are told that we cannot get in at 9:00 as they had said the previous evening, but have to wait until 9:30, after they get the tables set up. I wait with the suitcases and have another bad cup of coffee at Denny’s while Michael goes back to the hotel to get something important that we had forgotten – I can’t even remember what it was now.

Each exhibitor got a small table in an alcove, with paintings on three sides. The colorful paintings at my booth fit nicely with the Devil Scents theme, since they looked like the tortured, screaming creatures in the Quantum Demonology version of hell. With two people, setup went fairly quickly, but there was a lot of fussing around initially trying to decide how to configure the table. We ended up with the regular line on one side and the Devil Scents on the other. The clear acrylic stands to elevate bottles and signs worked well.

Then the public started pouring in. Everyone wanted to smell as many things as possible, so Michael and I were scrambling to talk to people, give them tester strips, and even occasionally make sales. The Square device for scanning credit cards into a phone worked flawlessly. Michael had undergone a crash sniffing course the night before, and with cheat sheet in hand, he did a fabulous job talking about all of the different fragrances and pushing his personal favorites, Red Cattleya, Javanica, A Midsummer Day’s Dream, and Kingston Ferry. I don’t think we had a free minute until sometime late in the afternoon when I started to feel as if I was being asphyxiated by all of the perfume floating around the gallery and had to step outside for a minute to breathe some fresh air.

At the end of the day, people had taken lots of sprayed strips in baggies, they’d sprayed themselves liberally with Devil Scents and other things, they’d bought a lot of small spray bottles, and they’d ordered some things that I hadn’t brought to the show. Very few large bottles were sold. Over the course of the day, I realized that if I’d brought sample packs, everyone would have bought them.  After all, the event was all about sampling, not buying a single perfume. Lesson Number Two: Don’t bring a lot of big bottles. People are there to try things out, not buy a bottle of “signature scent”, so nice sample packs are the way to go.

As we were packing up, I tried to make the rounds of other perfumers’ booths, and took a few photos. There was rumored to be free champagne at the bar, but by the time I got there it was gone, if it had ever been there at all.

Here are some more photos to help put names with faces. 

Here's Brent Leonesio of Smell Bent at his booth. It's interesting that he got paintings by the same artist we did. They really fit his look, too. I now realize that I didn't have time to even look and see who the artist was! 

Here are Ineke Ruhland (Ineke perfumes) and Danielle Sergent of Cognoscenti Perfumes. The photo was actually taken at the breakfast on Saturday, but it's included here in the names-to-faces parade.

Here is Leila Castle (Leila Castle Botanical Perfume) with her daughter, who was helping her at her booth.

BLOGGER IS SCREWING UP!

I've never had problems posting before, but today Blogger is screwing up at every stage. There's always an "error in saving" or "error in publishing". I wondered at first if it was because of my photos. Are they too large? If so, please tell me, Blogger, and I'll make them smaller. Why did my posts fail to save and fail to publish at every turn? What's wrong with a little feedback?

After finally managing to construct and publish the above two posts, I concluded that it wasn't the photos, it's just the general bugginess inherent in Blogger, possibly combined with flakiness due to the solar flare that failed to produce any northern lights last night, despite the prediction that it might.

I'll give Blogger the benefit of the doubt this time and assume that the problems are due to solar flare weirdness. The next time I may not be so understanding. Three strikes, and Blogger is likely to be out.

SAN FRANCISCO PART 2

After the breakfast (which was also lunch), the Saturday activities continued with the San Francisco Sniff, organized by Tama Blough (photo, with the colorful hair), who writes for CaFleureBon. Tama had put together swag bags for everyone who participated, so I scored some samples of things I would not otherwise have had a chance to experience, including some by perfumers who were not at the show. The Sniffers gathered first at the Alexander Book Store for a reading by Alyssa Harad, accompanied by sampling of a number of vintage perfumes. I think I was most taken with Jean Patou’s 1000, which I had not smelled in the vintage version before. I have to say that Alyssa’s reading was extremely moving. Everyone was practically in tears by the time she was done. If you like to read books about perfume, you should definitely check it out.

My copy of Alyssa’s book, pre-ordered from Amazon, arrived the same day I got back from SF along with the third book in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, which I am compelled to read first to find out what happens to all of the characters that I followed through the first two. A while back I had the good luck of finding the first two books at a local thrift store for next to nothing, but of course the third one was missing. Anyway, I’m halfway through Sugar Street, and will start on Alyssa’s book very soon. By the way, all of the Mahfouz books mention perfume frequently, although the details are mostly left to the imagination.

Rather than going to the department stores for the remainder of the Sniff, Michael and I took off on a walkabout and ended up at Yerba Buena Gardens where the Merola Opera Program was performing. It was the only sunny day we experienced while in San Francisco, but it was magnificent, with not a cloud in the sky. Lying on the grass on a cool day with warm sun, listening to a full orchestra and some really good singers – what an afternoon! The big surprise was the second excerpt that they performed, from Boito’s Mephistopheles, the scene where Faust enters into his deal with the Devil, as well as some subsequent scenes featuring our friend Dev – yet another example of synchronicity given that Sunday was the official launch of the DevilScents.

 That evening there was a champagne reception and dinner organized and partially sponsored by Yosh Han, who was the primary moving force behind the Salon. I’ve been continually impressed by Yosh’s ability to network like mad and get things done, and when I met her in person it was a pleasure to find that in addition to being highly efficient, she was unpretentious, down-to-earth, and altogether a nice person.

A huge thank-you to Yosh for organizing the Salon !!!

The dinner was at the Press Club, an upscale wine bar. The food we had was excellent, but the portions were so minimal that Michael said he wanted to stop for a burger on the way “home”. We didn’t, but we did compensate the next day by pigging out at the Buckhorn Grill, a fast-food “steak” stand in the Metreon food court.

The Press Club dinner was a wonderful opportunity to meet people and get to know them and their families. I had a great time talking to Shelly Waddington (En Voyage Perfumes, left in photo), Mandy Aftel (Aftelier Perfume, middle, bright purple top) and Lisa Fong (Artemisia Natural Perfume) and their respective husbands (Mandy's husband, Foster, is second from right, in orange shirt). I also enjoyed meeting Ragna Rostad-Ruffner (Divine Life Perfumes, second from left), Brent Leonesio (Smell Bent), Laurie Stern (Velvet and Sweet Pea) … and the list could go on and on. I know this sounds like name-dropping at its worst, but it was exciting to meet so many people that I’d read about or interacted with online, and I’d like to share my impression that they all seem like genuinely nice people. Perfumers, at least the ones I’ve met so far, are not the pretentious creatures that advertising copy writers might want us to believe. How can you be pretentious when you spend your time smelling things?

By the time the evening was over, I felt like I’d made connections with a whole new community of real people, and went to sleep looking forward to Sunday’s show. That report up next!

[Alexander Books photo from their website, group photo at Press Club by Mario Gomez, others mine] 

SAN FRANCISCO PART 1 AND THUNDERSTORMS

Where to start with a report on San Francisco? I suppose I could start at the end and tell you that I’ve been feeling terrible since I got back, sleeping a lot, and not getting much done. This means that I’m even more behind on shipping out orders and posting here than I would otherwise be. Little by little I’m feeling better and trying to get caught up.

It would make the most sense to begin at the beginning, with our arrival at the Hotel Abigail aka America’s Best Value Inn on Friday night. In terms of location and price we couldn’t have done better. It was located at the border between the Civic Center and Tenderloin districts, right next to the law school. It was only a few blocks from Market Street and a BART stop, and was within easy walking distance of all of the event venues. It was an old building from the 1920s, partially renovated and reasonably clean, and before we left they even got the ancient steam radiators working to take the chill off the cold San Francisco summer! The hotel had just changed owners and the staff were not the most competent, but you can’t have everything.

On Saturday morning I attended the “Supplier’s Breakfast”. Here’s a photo of (left to right) Lisa Fong (Artemisia Natural Perfume), yours truly, Alyssa Harad (Author of Coming to my Senses: A Story of Perfume) and Roxanna Villa (Roxanna Illuminated Perfume) at the Wichcraft Café (‘wich being short for sandwich, not a misspelled sorceress, but it seemed appropriate anyway). The breakfast was sponsored by Fragrance West, a company whose business is making large quantities of perfume concentrate based on clients’ formulas or briefs. It seems that some “artisan” perfumers have gone this route, in whole or in part, especially those who sell to distributors in Europe or other places where everything has to be certified IFRA-compliant. I have mixed feelings about this approach, especially given that making the concentrate is only one part of mass production. A more labor-intensive part (if you do it yourself) is bottling and packaging.

I suppose the major advantage of this approach is that one has an official “kosher for IFRA” certificate, but I’m not to the point where I want to sell thousands of bottles to European department stores. I don’t know that I ever will be. What I do know is that if I were producing for the mass market through a third party, especially one that was doing the formulating, I would no longer be an “artisan perfumer”, I would be a perfume company CEO. The question of what to farm out and what to do oneself is an ongoing topic for contemplation. Right now I do literally everything myself, but wouldn’t mind delegating some routine tasks like sample-making to a part-time employee. Beyond that … I don’t know.

Overall, the breakfast was a great opportunity to meet many of the participants in the Salon, as well as others who were there. One of the highlights for me was getting to meet Linda Andrews, of the Perfumer’s Apprentice, who is one of the only suppliers of aroma chemicals in small (less than 1 kg) amounts. I have bought a lot of things from Linda over the years, and it was wonderful to get to talk to her and have a face to put with the name. She’s one of my perfumery heroes because her work makes indie perfumers’ work possible. Thank you Linda!

I started this post yesterday and abandoned it halfway to take some aspirin, a hot bath and sleep. I’ve been feeling a little better today so got all of my pending orders filled, packed, and ready to go to the post office. All but one. Michael took this person’s payment, name, and address at the show, but didn’t write down what it was that he ordered. Michael’s famous last words were, “I’ll remember”.  Lesson Number One: Write down what people order!

Ever since last night we’ve been having freakish thunderstorms. We almost never have thunderstorms in the Pacific Northwest, but when we do, they go all out with massive amounts of lightning and thunder. This afternoon the lightning was so close that there was no lag between the flash and the boom. Of the half dozen storms that have come through, only two have had rain, one with big hail. It’s mostly lots and lots of lightning. Not a nice welcome back to Seattle.

The next post will continue the report on Saturday’s activities and probably more lessons learned. 

[Hotel photo from their website; lightning photo from Wikimedia, other photos mine]

CLUES FOR THE CONTEST

Now that I’m home again, I’ll get around to writing about my experiences in San Francisco, but first I’d like to announce that no one came close to guessing which posts got the most hits. Some titles that you mentioned were posts that I would like to have had get lots of hits, but that wasn’t the case. Those who guessed “Ambroxan and Not a Perfume” came close, since it’s somewhere in the top 20, but it’s not in the top 5.

Here are the clues:

Two posts deal with a food material and a perfume material.

One post deals with pruning of trees and shrubs

One post deals with a seasonal perfume and an orchid.

One post is about a small fragrant orchid flower and a perfume.

Happy hunting, and good luck!

[Puzzle picture from Wikimedia]

A CONTEST WHILE I'M OUT OF TOWN

I don't plan to post anything until I'm back from my San Francisco trip on the 11th, and it may be a few days before I get around to it even then, with catch-up to do after leaving the orchids in the care of a house-sitter.

To provide a little fun and games to brighten up your summer, I'd like to set up a contest. It goes like this:

In the two years that this blog has been in existence, what are the 5 posts that have received the most page views? Frankly, I was surprised when I checked. The person who comes closest to guessing will get a BIG gift package full of fragrant surprises. The second place person will get a medium box of fragrant surprises, and third place will get a little box of the same. If no one guesses any of them, I'll start giving clues to aid in the treasure hunt, and it will be over when it's over, i.e., when there are three people who correctly guess at least one to three of the most "popular" posts.

Over and out.

[Roulette photo from Wikimedia]

A POTPOURRI FOR THURSDAY

I didn’t start this intending to write about making a potpourri, although potpourri would certainly fall under the umbrella of perfumery. When I started writing, what I had in mind was a random mix of snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails of information that wouldn’t fit anywhere else, sort of a clean-up operation before I leave town. But writing has a way of taking its own course once I sit down at the laptop, sort of like characters in a play.

I have to say that I am not a fan of potpourris, tending to focus on the “pourri” (rotten) aspect of them, and having far too many memories of being gifted with cellophane or cloth packages of dried, crumbling plant material impregnated with nasty-smelling synthetic scents. The thought of making a real-life potpourri had never crossed my mind until I sat down to write this. My mind having steered itself in this direction, however, I’m thinking about what my criteria would be for an acceptable potpourri, and how I would use it.

I’m not big on scenting my drawers or closets. Lord knows there are enough fragrances floating around the house all the time to fumigate any moths that might be lurking in the shadowy corners of these places, and I don’t wear wool. It’s too scratchy, and I think I might be mildly allergic to it. I do occasionally enjoy burning incense, so potpourri as a room scent might be the way to go. Maybe potpourri would work best as a dry perfume that could then be tinctured, or maybe it could even be burned as loose incense.

For a potpourri to be acceptable, it would have to be natural, not scented with anything synthetic since that seems like that defeats the purpose of making it in the first place. I’ve got enough rose petals to dry and start with, but I don't think they’re going to be the primary scent material. My guess is that flower petals mostly just function as the sponge that absorbs other things. I’ve got tons of peony petals, and they could also function as a scent sponge. There’s plenty of lavender growing nearby, there’s rosemary, mint, sage, thyme, and lemon verbena, there’s my overflowing spice drawer, and there are all of the various dried herbal things sitting around in my storage area with the idea that one day I’m going to tincture them.

I don’t think I like potpourris in bags, so maybe a pot of some sort would be the way to go, like the nice ceramic orchid pots made by my sister-in law, who is a potter. My idea is that potpourri should be a cumulative project to which things keep getting added as they become available, so it would be constantly changing with the seasons, but with a common thread of old the stuff combined with the new. 

Now I see that writing has led to a new experiment, which I’m actually going to undertake and report on from time to time as it progresses. The first batch of rose and peony petals are drying in the sun right now, and I’m finding that as they dry, the scent intensifies. The white peony petals smell fabulous! When it’s finished, some lucky readers will have a chance to smell the result. But in the meantime, what do you think about potpourri? Would you use it at all? What for? What characteristics would your ideal potpourri have?