Visual Perfume

I love fragrances.  They are intoxicating at times and sublime at other times.  I'm not talking about the synthetic fragrances - you know, the scent that immediately bombards you when you walk into Macy's or some other big department store.  Yuk.  That stuff gives me a headache.  I'm talking about natural perfumes made from essential oils.

Christopher McMahon has a great site about fragrances.  He is very knowledgeable and extremely generous in sharing recipes.  In his newsletter today, he shared a recipe for potpourri - or visual perfumes, as he calls them.  The recipe sounds heavenly and I'm posting it here, along with a portion from the newsletter.

One of the simple pleasures, bringing warmth and sweetness to the home environment in which one lives, can be achieved through the creation of visual perfumes. There are many aromatic botanicals which have been used and are used now in the form of incense and perfumes to sharpen ones focus on inner life. Frankincense and myrrh are in Western culture renowned for there role in sacred tradition. Other botanicals were used in preparing festive meals or because they were special treats that one might only enjoy at that season of the year. Many spices with their aromatic aromas and citrus fruits, which were once rare holiday treats for many people fall in this category. People in many countries have also enjoyed bringing into their homes scented green coniferous foliage to decorate with the homes in various ways. There is a vast fragrant wealth to draw upon if one wishes to pursue this lovely creative work.

Another dimension of creating a visual perfume for the holiday season is that one may start collecting and drying various botanicals for it during any season of the year when they are available. In almost every environment there are some types of mosses berries, cones, flowers, etc that can be harvested for making ones aromatic creation later on in the year. It can be a family affair and a great nature education for ones children and oneself as well. There are many elegant shapes, forms and colors as well as scents of plants to be found in mountains, meadows, forests etc, many of which can be dried. It can become a wonderful exercise in observation of the world around one and children, with their natural sense of wonder alive and active, can often discover things which one might never have considered from the angle of visual perfume creation. In fact one may include beautiful stones, shells, and other precious gifts from nature in their creations. In that way the visual perfume can also tell a story of personal discovery.

For the holiday season we have created Winter Radiance Visual Perfume using various botanicals to create a gold, brown, red and green theme and blending into essential oils and spices with a resinous, spicy, citrus scent.

 Natural Botanicals:

1 lb frankincense tears
1 lb star anise
1 lb dried orange peel
2 lbs corn cob grains(for the fixative)
8 ounces green cedar tips
1 lb red lichii berries
8 ounces birch pine cones
4 ounce grey oak moss

Essence blend:

2 ounces Sweet Orange eo
1 1/2 ounces Frankincense Cedarwood Absolute
1/2 ounce Fir Balsam Absolute
1/4 ounce Star Anise eo
1/8 ounce Cinnamon bark eo
1 ounce Pine Needle Absolute
1/2 ounce Templin(Fir Cone) eo

Fairy Flower perfume!

"THE 'TWIN-FLOWER' GARDEN"

I LABORED, delving, sowing,
To plant a garden wee
Of seedsman's flowers for showing:
The wild-flowers laughed at me.
I caught the witches growing
Around a shattered tree
A thousand twin-flowers meeting
In fairy folk-mote there;
They nodded me a greeting,
And fragrance filled the air:
"We came without your weeting,
We thrived without your care." -

-from Lips of Music
By Charlotte Porter

There is such a thing! Christopher McMahon and his wife, Suzanne, are the owners of White Lotus Aromatics; they have a newsletter that is filled with lots of information about all things aromatic. He is generous enough to share his perfume recipes and this one for Fairy Flower Perfume sounds divine.

Here is an excerpt from the current newsletter and, of course, the recipe for the perfume - the entire article is worth reading.

In the late spring, here in the Pacific Northwest, one finds in the mixed conifer forest the lovely, delicate twin flower growing over crumbling logs and fallen trees. twin flowerFrom above the small rounded glossy green leaves of this creeping sub-shrub, rise up tiny, nodding, pinkish-white flowers, appearing in twin sets, off a single stem which branches into two. Thousands of these elegant botanical treasures may appear in certain areas, scenting the air with an ethereal essence that is of a rare and precious beauty captivating the heart with its simple innocent, purity and sweetness. As one goes through the forest one may first detect their precious scent upon the air, and if they are not acquainted with its source, wonder where such a fragrance originates. Then when one beholds the myriads of tiny flowers illuminated by the slanting rays of light piercing through the evergreen forest canopy and falling upon these small gems, and bends to inhale their sublime beauty, one becomes enchanted and falls under the spell of the fairy land which they inhabit. In its bouquet one perceives notes of almond, citrus, rose-jasmine-orange blossom accord, frankincense and a very high etheric note as is sometimes found in blue lotus.

I have endeavored to capture the beauty of this tiny forest beauty in Fairy Flower Perfume.

3 ounces Lime Essence
1 ounce Lemon Essence
3/4 ounce Jasmin grandiflorum abs
1/2 ounce Rosa bourbonia/Rosa centifolia coextracted absolute
1/4 ounce Ylang Extra
1 ounce Sandalwood Papua
1/4 ounce Tonka Bean Absolute
1/2 ounce Frankincense/Cedarwood coextracted absolute
1/4 ounce Bitter Almond oil in fractionated coconut oil
1/2 ounce Orange Blossom Absolute
1/2 Blue Lotus Absolute

You can find a photo of the twinflower here and also at Christopher's site. The poem above was taken from the newsletter.