Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Click the image to enlarge it for viewing My entry in the Memory and Desire project was posted last night . I'll wait a few days to see the comments and answer them here, as that forum is just for reader comments, not perfumer-answers-the-readers comments. Thanks so much to Heather, she's a peach for all the effort and intellect she put into this monumental Internet project.

Below is a letter I just received from Tony Burfield of Cropwatch. Feel free to redistribute it. Dear All, Citrus Oils: the Situation Cropwatch is directly opposing IFRA's Risk Assessment on furanocoumarins, and its proposals to severely restrict citrus oil usage in cosmetics products. Unfortunately, because of the lack of transparency exercised by RIFM, IFRA and the EU Commission over this matter. it means that unless you, dear reader, belong to a professional association, probably won't get to see IFRA's information letter IL799 on the topic, or the Risk Assessment that the EU Commission was given in late 2007 by IFRA. IFRA have apparently suggested a cosy future chat with the EU Commissioners, some unnamed industry moguls and fragrance consumers (presumably IFRA or RIFM members) to 'explain matters' - presumably code for agreeing their highly restrictive citrus oil proposals (see below) with the EU regulator. Nobody with an independent or contrary opinion is to

My gigantic plant of Jasmine sambac Duke of Tuscany is starting to bloom. This sambac is slow growing and has huge - for jasmine huge I should qualify - flowers about the size of a tiny carnation, full of tightly-packed petals and the most tender non-indolic jasmine scent ever. I just adore it! I just plucked the first blossom of the season from it today, and left one on for the birds and lizards to enjoy ;-) It's full of about-to-open buds, and I hope I have some to bring to the lunch tomorrow of the Miami NP crew so they can enjoy it. I coined the organoleptic term "tender" and I have to add that to the Aromatic Lexicon on the evaluation sheet my students use. So many of the home-grown jasmines I have become "tender" upon tincturing. Sigh. They're just so lovely, tender, powdery, soft, sweet and delicious. April and May are the big jasmine blooming months here in Miami, not August and September as they are in India and France. Don't know the reason fo

Click on the photo for enlarged view Long before the marketers and perfume houses got savvy, a display spilled the coal, er, the beans: the source of many of the synthetic aromachemicals used in perfumery since the 1880's were made from coal or petroleum sources. The lady in the photo seems to be raising a glass lid over a container that holds scent strips of the coal-derived scent, and the glass jars on top hold the natural materials of fragrance. I can identify rose and jasmine in the jars. Not much else to say about this, just that I do prefer the complexity, richness, sustainability and beauty of natural aromatics.

Luca Turin, perfume critic, author of the soon-to-be-released The Perfume Guide just wrote about a custom perfume he had made by Dominique Dubrana of Italy . We in the Guild know him as a Professional Perfumer who prefers to be called Salaam, a longtime member of my Yahoo Natural Perfumery group and Guild member. His keen insights and helpful comments offered in our private group always have a ring of experience and clarity, and he gets to the soul of the matter with ease. Turin found it refreshing that Salaam did not require a questionnaire about astrological sign, personality traits, or other psychological items that are so often the tool of the custom perfumer. Instead Turin got to choose the raw materials from a list. The resultant perfume has increased the openly-skeptical Turin's opinion of what a perfume made only with natural ingredients can be - and we must thank Salaam for that. Additionally, Salaam is the only natural perfumer included in Turin's new book, anothe

More Debunking of Bad Science from Tony Burfield of Cropwatch I've known Natural Perfumers Guild member Tony Burfield of Cropwatch for about ten years now. We "met" in online forums on aromatherapy, where we, and many others were real "safety nuts." All this precedes the recent upsurge in interest in niche perfumers creating fragrances in their (often unregulated) studios. At the time we were alarmed at the new folks flooding into the aromatherapy world, enticed with, and in love with, natural aromatics. Often they had no idea of maximum allowable usage rates and surrounding safety issues. Natural aromatics do have some risk factors, depending upon the chemical composition of the aromatic and the rate at which it is used in a blend. Some are fairly innocuous. Others can permanantly scar you with Berloque dermatitis markings, which look like dark, blotchy birthmarks. Others may cause blistering rashes, itching and lifelong sensitization. A few cause allergenic re