TWO EXPENSIVE FLORAL ABSOLUTES: OSMANTHUS AND BLUE LOTUS

I really haven’t wanted to get into using very expensive natural materials, since I like to keep my creations affordable, but I did go a little way down that rabbit hole in making the Devil Scents and one of my current projects is also leading me farther down that slippery slope to perfumer's hybrid heaven-hell. It’s a formula with a lot of earthy base notes, but I want to use florals as well. I first thought of using tuberose absolute, because it would fit conceptually with the general theme, but when I added it, it clashed horribly. I had just received a sample of osmanthus absolute from Eden Botanical, so on a whim, I tried that with the base. Perfect. Or nearly perfect. It just needed a little sharpening of the floral notes.

There was recently a post about osmanthus on CaFleureBon, giving a lot of its cultural history, so receiving the sample was, if you will, synchronicity doing its work again. Eden Botanical sure knows how to get a perfumer hooked.

Botanically, Osmanthus is a genus of trees or shrubs that are mostly native to Asia, but Osmanthus americanus is a small tree native to the southeastern US, also known as devilwood, due to the fact that its wood is so dense and hard and difficult to cut. Its tiny white flowers are fragrant. I would love to smell them in real life some day. The Asian species Osmanthus fragrans, is the one used in perfumery. The flowers are small, borne in clusters, and yellow to orange in color. I don’t know what the live flowers of either species smell like, but osmanthus absolute is an odd fragrance, diffusely and sweetly floral in the nicest sort of way, like a highly refined version of ylang-ylang, but also with shockingly distinct notes of apricot, green things, and (to me) blue cheese. Others describe it as “leathery”, but to me it’s more cheesy. Maybe it’s just the Eden version that smells that way. Regardless, it goes really well with earthy base notes. Once I get my supply (yes, it’s on order), I’ll do a giveaway of a tiny sample.

Then I had another idea.

A year or so ago I ordered some oil (aka absolute) of blue lotus, Nymphaea caerulea, from a company in Thailand that grows and produces it. Again, I’ve never smelled the fresh flowers, but I can say that blue lotus absolute has a unique fragrance that’s unlike anything else in the olfactory universe. It’s floral of course, a little sharp and spicy, a little metallic, and quite unlike anything else that I’ve smelled. I was not sure what to think of it the first time I smelled it, but have been saving it all this time. I added it to the base and the osmanthus, and voila! The floral scent popped out in full focus. I’ve got it all on my skin right now, and it’s been going strong all evening. I applied a drop of pure blue lotus in a separate place, and am enjoying it immensely.

Before using blue lotus in a formula, I have to know that I can get more, but the supplier’s website lists it as being “out of stock”. Dang!!! I may have to try some other varieties of lotus to see if they would work, and eventually synthesize an accord that approximates the scent of Nymphaea caerulea, the blue Egyptian lotus. I think it could be really useful. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the osmanthus and maybe work on synthesizing that, too. 

By the way, here's a picture of Osmanthus americanus. Has anyone out there smelled it in real life? 

Now that I look at the flowers, I think maybe there's something like that growing on the university campus. I remember smelling some wonderful little flowers on a shrub last winter, and wondering what they were. More research is in order!

[Photos all from Wikimedia]

THE DEVIL SCENTS ARE OUT!

The DevilScents have finally come out of the lab and their lurking in the perfume underground, and emerged on the website. Last night I spent some time putting at least the minimal information on there, which was not an easy task given the rather cumbersome system for uploading photos and other items. They are listed under a new fragrance category, “Special Editions”, since they really don’t fit in any of the others, and at least some of them may be limited editions.

All of them are available in the usual formats, including a 5-ml spray parfum, 15-ml screw-top parfum, 30-ml spray EdP, and a sample pack consisting of 5 x 3-ml spray vials. I had to price them a little higher than the regular line because I used some very expensive natural materials in significant amounts.

For those who missed them before, these are are the full descriptions that I published on the website (more or less):

LIL

This is the fragrance of Lilith, the original Eve and wife of the Devil. It is floral and fruity in a green, slightly sinister way, more sharp-edged and intimidating than soft, sweet, or cuddly. It is the enthralling scent of a woman with perfect confidence in her powers, a swirling, almost chameleon-like veil of fragrance that is ethereal and nearly transparent, but still vividly and unquestionably present and compelling. The base includes woody notes, cashmeran, musk, and patchouli; the heart features passion-fruit, angel’s trumpet, lily-of-the-valley, geranium, cyclamen, and a tiny hint of rose.  To provide the special Lilith touch, the top notes are anchored by davana and kewda, topped off with a generous helping of kaffir lime leaf. This is the fragrance of a female warrior who not only fights and wins, but seduces everyone in her path.

THE DEV VARIATIONS

The DEV series is a mandala of 4 fragrances, each a variation on labdanum, which, according to Quantum Demonology, is the characteristic scent of the Devil, affectionately known as Dev. Each variation represents a different phase in the narrative of seduction, passion, destruction, and ultimate circling back to the beginning as recounted in Quantum Demonology, and functions in much the same way as a movement in a musical composition. These four fragrances will be issued as a limited edition series, with the second one, DEV #2 eventually slated to go into permanent production along with LIL. DEV #4 has turned out to be very popular, so it may go into the permanent collection as well.

DEV #1: FOREPLAY

The lightest and happiest of the series, it represents the early phase of the story when the female protagonist is being tempted and seduced into a neo-Faustian deal with the devil. It’s the scent of falling in love despite misgivings and against one’s better judgment, a scenario in which bright top notes play against a dark and foreboding base. It contains three kinds of synthetic oud and other woody base notes, black vanilla, tolu balsam, clear labdanum absolute, synthetic musk deer accord, Africa stone tincture, ambergris tincture, synthetic civet, beeswax absolute, frankincense, African bluegrass, giant arborvitae wood from the Pacific Northwest, and cinnamon leaf.

DEV #2: THE MAIN ACT

This smoky, dense, and rich composition is a big, insistent fragrance that represents the romantic phase when the tempestuous love affair between the protagonist and Dev is proceeding in all of its ups and downs. It’s the fundamental seductive scent of Dev, without the darkest and most sinister of the base notes, a spicy, woody, animalic scent that stuns the senses and renders the lover oblivious to any of the horrors and dangers that might lie in wait. It contains three different kinds of labdanum, tolu balsam, black agar, woody base notes, musks, castoreum, civet, cistus oil, incense, immortelle absolute, cade, davana, and the scent of a worn black leather jacket. It’s spiced up with a tiny dab of rose, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and cinnamon leaf. It combines the spiritual with the carnal in a rising plume of incense accompanied by the riff of a heavy metal bass played by an entity in a black leather jacket.

DEV #3: THE INEVITABLE

This muted, dark, melancholy fragrance is made using 100% natural materials. It represents the stage at which all secrets have been revealed, after the inevitable destruction of people, things, and relationships has occurred, when the two lovers recognize that they have to part ways forever. It contains New Caledonian sandalwood absolute, dark labdanum, clear labdanum, red spikenard, a generous dose of ancient fossilized amber, ambergris tincture, black truffle tincture (the fungus, not the chocolate), cistus oil, cassie absolute, frankincense, davana, African bluegrass, myrrh tincture, motia attar, and cinnamon leaf. It is a meditative scent of loneliness and resignation to fate, but one that promotes meditation and strange dreams.

DEV #4: REPRISE

This is the bare-bones version of all the incarnations of Dev, paring them down to their unifying essence and clearing the way for the labdanum to shine through. It’s the scent of coming back full circle to where one started, but with new eyes, as if the world had been tumbled smooth and worn down by events to reveal the clear, shining gemstone at its center. It is the scent of transcendence and triumph after great loss, the calm vision that comes after having weathered a disaster. It contains clear labdanum absolute, tolu balsam, dark labdanum, a pinch of woody base notes, a little bit of frankincense, and the tiniest bit of giant arborvitae as a top note. It is a simple reprise of the original theme, stripped down to its soul, with no more illusions. It is the aura of readiness to move on to a new and higher level in the infinite spiral of life. 

[Satan sculpture by Jean-Jacques Fouchere, 1836]

WEEKLY RANT: MAIL-IN REBATES

Our capitalist society has come up with some pretty stupid ideas, and somewhere near the top of the list is the mail-in rebate. Can you imagine sending off for a rebate on a 12-pack of bad beer? I thought mail-in rebates had gone out of fashion, but apparently they’ve just taken on a new form. I recently bought a new phone from T-Mobile. The price of the phone was $99.99 (of course it couldn’t be an even 100.00, because that sounds like SO much more than 99.99).  The phone came with a $50 mail-in rebate form, which I dutifully completed and spent 45 cents mailing to some dreary corporate hive full of drones, where it took about a month to process. Maybe the paperwork had to go to India and back – who knows?

Just when I’d forgotten about the whole rebate thing, an envelope appeared in my mailbox, probably having cost another 20 cents or so in postage, given that they used “presorted first class mail” rates. I have no idea how much the labor of the drones who processed my rebate cost, but let’s say that they were working for minimum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, and spent a total of 5 minutes on the matter. That would have cost the rebate-processing people 60 cents. The envelope was printed in color, with a custom design. Bought or produced in extreme bulk, these probably cost less than a penny, as did each of the three color-printed advertising and “informational” inserts that were in the envelope, but they do use a good bit of paper. Along with the inserts was another piece of custom-color-printed paper with a plastic debit card attached. According to my research, these cards cost about 12 cents each if bought in bulk. Let’s say all of the paper and plastic together cost about 15 cents. Not very much in terms of money, but a huge waste of resources and the time it took to design, print, and assemble it all. Even if it was all done by a machine, the machine had to be designed, programmed and tended by humans. My data had to be input, since my name is on the card. Let’s say another 5 minutes of collective drone time at 60 cents.

The back of the sheet to which the card is attached is covered with the smallest and poorest quality print I’ve ever seen. Obviously the designer hoped that it would not be read. The card was not issued by T-Mobile, but by “CTI Prepaid Services”. There was a fee schedule at the end of the small print that mentioned an “account maintenance fee” of $3.00 per month. Huh? I hadn’t asked for an account, and I certainly had no intention of maintaining one. Suspecting some sort of card scam, I phoned the “help” number on the insert. I was transferred from one robotic voice to another, with no indication that there were any humans connected with the number. I always scream curses and obscenities at phone robots, hoping that the call will be recorded and a human will eventually hear the unsatisfactory conversation.  I suppose that’s wishful thinking and my curses echo in an empty virtual space. In any case, after going around in circles with the robots, they told me that they couldn’t understand what I wanted and to try the call again later. Again, someone had to buy an automatic phone system and program it. According to one website, these systems start at about $25,000. I have no idea how to calculate the cost of my interacting with this system for 10 minutes, but let’s call it $1.00.

In frustration I phoned the local T-Mobile store, where I talked to a real human for about 5 minutes. I hope T-Mobile pays more than minimum wage, but let’s assume the worst and just say that’s another 60 cents spent on my rebate.

The very nice woman on the phone assured me that I would not be charged any fees, and that I could use the card at any store that took Visa. I asked about canceling it, but it seems that there’s no way to make sure that the card is defunct, given that humans don’t administer it. Supposedly it just “cancels itself” after the money is unloaded from it. Interesting. Cynic that I am, somehow I think the fine print is trying to tell me that it won’t be canceled and that they’ll try to charge me for not using it after the initial transaction.

Tomorrow I’ll try to go out and buy some groceries with the card, but what a lot of trouble and wasted resources! Adding up the estimated cost of processing this rebate, it comes to about $3.50, and that’s probably very conservative. It would have been so much simpler to just credit my T-Mobile account with $50. Or, for an even more radical idea, how about selling the phones for $49.99 and eliminating the whole rebate nonsense?

I suppose rebate processing is one of those useless industries that the printers, phone robot companies, and credit card manufacturing companies make money from, but it actually makes me angry to think that resources and human time are used in this frivolous way. Probably the rationale is that most people are too busy or lazy to fill out the paperwork and send it off, and end up paying full price, or else they end up charging a lot of stuff to the card and incurring massive fees. Whatever scenario you envision, it’s a complete waste, and it makes me think about how many other utterly useless industries exist, all feeding off each other and making everything more complicated than it needs to be.

Rant over. Time to go to the grocery store. 

[Beer rebate and robot army photos from Wikimedia]

SAN FRANCISCO PART 4: MORE LESSONS LEARNED AND A TREATISE ON GELATO

After an intense day on Sunday, both Michael and I were ready for some relaxation. Fortunately we had planned a vacation day into the schedule, but first I had to pack up the leftover items from the show and ship them back to Seattle. Lesson Number 3: If you know you’ll have to ship stuff back from a show, pack a small roll of tape and pre-printed address labels to go on the boxes. We had to start our morning with a trip to the Market Street Walgreen’s to get tape. You might think a hotel would have some basic packing supplies, but they did not, nor had they ever heard of FedEx. We ended up taking the boxes by taxi to the nearest FedEx office after finding the address online, and the whole thing was still much cheaper than checking two bags.

Free at last, we hopped on the BART and headed for Berkeley, where it was likely to be warm and sunny. It was. We first went to visit the Musical Offering Café, which combines a classical CD shop in back with a café in front. Michael’s brother managed it for years when he lived in Berkeley, and the same owner was still there. She and Michael reminisced a lot and talked about the future of classical music, classical CDs, and CDs in general. 

We then went walkabout, enjoying the blue sky, sun, and just being in a beautiful part of the world. As we walked past the Gelateria Naia, I felt something calling my name. Being lactose-intolerant, I don’t usually eat ice cream, and I don’t even like the taste of the sticky sludge put out by most US ice cream makers, but I somehow had a quivering feeling that there might be something here for me.

And was there ever. The case was full of the most enticing array of sorbetto ever, and even the gelato seemed much less milky and sticky than usual. They were happy to provide tastes of anything and everything, and my only regret is not having tasted everything in the store. My first taste was Earl Grey gelato.  It was a wonderful mix of tea and bergamot, just as aromatic as a cup of really good Earl Grey tea, but velvety and cold. Michael the ice cream lover was immediately infatuated with it and ended up with a big dish of the stuff. I went on to taste the rose gelato. That’s right, a floral ice cream in the US. The last time I had anything of the sort was in India. It was true to the flower fragrance, and I’m sure it was made with real rosewater. The aroma was wonderful, but it was a little too creamy for my taste, and I wished it had been a sorbetto. Next up was mojito sorbetto. That was it!! Fresh mint, lime, and no milk anywhere in sight. I ordered a big scoop of mojito on a sugar cone, and had it topped off with a tiny dollop of rose.

That cone was the best thing I’ve had since I was in Florence, where I had fig and plum sorbetto, both of which were available at Naia, too, along with things like mango, cranberry, watermelon, and even prickly pear! Delicious.

I really love sorbetto made with odd things. I don’t mean odd in the sense of “oreo cookies”, which is just disgusting, but odd in the sense of using perfumey materials or spices as flavorings. Two of of my favorite surprises were having thyme sorbetto in Spain, and the rose gelato and mojito sorbetto in Berkeley. Other good flavors would be lavender, sage, saffron (popular in India), rosemary, violet, ginger, basil, oregano, orange flower, cardamom, and lemongrass. Going way out there, how about labdanum, musk, or wasabi?

We have had an ice-cream making apparatus languishing in a storage closet for many years, given to us as a gift, and I’m halfway tempted to haul it out and start experimenting with sorbetto flavors. If the weather ever warms up this summer, it will be tempting. 

After the gelateria experience, we walked about some more, eventually ending up at a local microbrewery for dinner. Then, as we were about to go back to the BART, Michael decided we should check out a game store that we passed on the way. After browsing a bit, he became fascinated by the go players at tables in the middle of the room. One of the players offered to teach him the game, so he sat down, but fairly quickly got tired of it and sat me down in his place. That’s how I learned to play go from Professor Herb Doughty, the president of the Berkeley Go Club, who has been playing every day for the past 50 years and is a master of the game. I’m not big on playing board games, but it was kind of fun, and I now know the basics if anyone ever challenges me to a game of go.

You never know what you’ll encounter on a walkabout. 

[Photos from Wikimedia]

SAN FRANCISCO PART 3, CONTINUED

Apparently Blogger is just having a bad day. As soon as I started this post I got the warning that there was an error in saving/publishing, so it's not the photos. I have to work around the general flakiness that's going on, hit "save" periodically, and work with the saved drafts. Sort of makes me want to switch to Wordpress.

Anyway, here goes with some more photos.


This one is of Sarah Horowitz (left) and Miriam Vareldzis (40 Notes Perfumes). Again, this was taken at the Saturday breakfast, where things were more leisurely.

Here are Nikki Sherritt of Rebel and Mercury (left) and Loreto Remsing of L'Aromatica, again at the breakfast.

And here are Danielle Sergent (left), Christi Meshell of House of Matriarch (center) and Laurie Stern of Velvet and Sweet Pea. Interestingly, it was in San Francisco that I learned that Nikki Sherritt and Christi Meshell are both in the Seattle area, and that Christi is practically my neighbor. I'm sure we will be getting together soon.

And to finish, here I am with Shelley Waddington at her booth, where she had an orchid on the table and some colorful abstract art in the background.

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.