Wild harvesting waterlilies for Mothers Day 2017

The past two years I had very little free time to blog as we travelled the globe in search of beautiful things to add to our range and opened thirteen new RAIN stores including international branches in Kinsale and Winthrop, Ireland. 

This is all about to change so hold onto your hat as we kick off our new regular blog posts with the birth of a new range, just in time for Mothers Day.

The cape waterlily blooms at the height of summer, when it is jolly hot and one does not mind getting wet wading out into the dams to pick the blooms. 

Rural waterways come to life with the elegant blue blooms which emit a sublime aquatic floral essence - only discernible before the heat of the day vapor rises it.

This highly elusive fragrance can only be captured through the ancient perfumery technique of enfleurage - a labour of love.

 Fresh blooms need to be harvested daily (yes every day) ...and placed upside down into a fatty medium. This is then covered and sealed to create a kind of a womb - like environment  in which all the perfume vapors are captured and trapped in the fat. 

Animal fat was used in ancient French perfumery ... but we use vegetable butters to marry with our Beauty Without Cruelty ethos. 

The blooms are then left for twenty four hours in the butter at room temperature, after which they are discarded and a fresh round of blooms placed into the same butter. 

Yes - that means going back into the dam and fetching more blooms - every day! 

After roughly twenty repetitions of this process, the butter is then sufficiently impregnated with floral essence to enable the blending of a perfume.

The butter is then washed in alcohol to transpose the floral essence into the solvent - from whence a perfume is born.

Our Mothers Day 2017 range has been based on this Waterlily fragrance.

The laborious process of daily harvesting and infusing, seemed somehow symbolic of the pregnancy process -  a journey of time and energy to birth a brand new creation.

We think moms will love this clean aquatic floral in our limited edition Mothers Day Range and we have a gorgeous Free Gift With Purchase scarf for you to reward you for your purchase if you buy for mom for R650.00. 

It is a match made in heaven. 

But hurry, this is a once off limited edition offer ending on Mothers Day.

Follow us on social media for more Mothers Day promotions this month.

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Fragrance Families : AMBER

FRAGRANCE FAMILIES : AMBER



Most of these Amber ingredients have strong historical and Biblical connections - which means spiritual connotations. Next to the woods and leathers - I simply love these smells - they really do touch my spirit.

BENZOIN

Alias Styrax tonkinensis - benzoin is a gum/resin which is produced from solvent extraction and occurs naturally in Laos, Indonesia, China.

Its history is pretty confusing and scrambled and all I could really make sense of was that the resin when burned is fairly toxic and that it was used during the harvest of frankincense to drive the venomous snakes away .

It has a sweet, spicy, warm , balsamic, woody note. It has many similarities to Vanilla which also gives it a caramel, milky odour and that means it can also be found in the Gourmand Fragrance family.

Benzoin oil  is pretty powerful and can overwhelm a perfume if not used with discretion and caution.It can be used as a heart or base note and is decribed as balsamic, spicy and incense like.

FRANKINCENSE

Boswellia cartii is also known as Olibanum or Frankincense. It is an olearesin and the gum is obtained by slashing the bark of the tree with a panga and allowing it to bleed and harden. these hardened drops of gum are also called "tears " . 

One of the three precious gifts given to the baby Jesus by the wise men , frankinsence has been traded for over 5000 years  and has powerful Biblical references . In Malachi 1:11 it implies that the odour of frankincense is the pure odour of the Divine God.

The BBC video series on sourcing Frankincense was extremely evocative and made me want to jump on a camel and head into the mountains of Somalia  and Oman to find my own.

 It comes from the resin or tears which form on the Boswellia tree which is highly endangered and grows at high inaccessible altitudes and extremely unforgiving conditions .

The resin/tears are steam distilled to capture the fragrance oil. Or the resin is burned directly over hot coals to free the beautiful mystical fragrance.

It is a raw material which evokes mysticism, ritual, and spiritulism.the citrussy confir undertones are unmistakable when comparing to the other resins in the Amber family. It can be a top note, but also a base note.The fir/pine notes seem to emerge more and more into the second hour.

LABDANUM

Spain ,  Portugal , North Africa , and Egypt are home to this lovely rock rose /cistus plant which produces through steam distillation and boiling of its leaves and branches, to release the resin and produce a glorious warm, rich, complex , woody amber fragrance. you would not expect it from such a plant with thin papery flowers !

In ancient times, labdanum was collected by combing the beards of the goats and sheep with a small wooden rake that had leather thongs for teeth. The animals would graze among the rock rose plants and the resin would accumulate on their fur.

It is also a Biblical fragrance mentioned twice in the Book of Genesis where it refers to labdanum being carried from Egypt to Palestine.Scholars believe that the mysterious ingredient in the Holiest of Incense which is mentioned in Exodus 30:34-36 as onycha - is actually labdanum.

Its fragrance has been referred to as dry musk, animalic, sweet, woody , leathery and ambergris. It is said that labdanum closely resembles ambergris ( whale vomit )  which makes it tenacious in a fragrance.

It is tricky to use as it is a thick black viscous goo which becomes brittle with age.

I really like a fellow colleague ( Maxine 's )  description : " Drying down reveals tendrils of smoke wafting into the air that are still distinctly resinous, ritualistic, conjuring impressions of an orthodox church, comforting in its permanence, captivating, earth-bound, recalling sounds of Gregorian chants; medieval." 

MYRRH

Myrrh comes from a specific species of Commiphora tree found in Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia , Kenya, East Africa- Commiphora Myrrha.It comes from the tree actually bleeding from a wound - which makes it a little sad to use. 

The gum is waxy and coagulates quickly turning hard and glossy with time. It is yellowish in colour and may even be clear or opaque. It darkens deeply with age.

Myrrh is  an oleo resin ( natural gum ) which is burnt on hot coals or steam distilled.

 Like Frankincense, it was one of the very precious gifts given to the baby Christ by the three wise men, and in the Bible is referred to as the Balm of Gilead.It was used during the ancient Egyptian embalming of the dead rituals

It is also an ingredient in the holy annointing oil of the Tabernacle high priests in the Bible.Used also for Kings and Queens as a purifcation ritual as we read in the Book of Esther 2:12 where it was used to purify King Ahasuerus.

It was romantically traded out of the Nabatean kingdom of Petra in Jordan.

It definitely has a mushroom like quality which seems to emerge more into hour two.

The myrrh that I have is really not great quality and has very little fragrance sadly. It has got woody balsamic resiny sweet notes , but also that musty mushroom fungus damp quality.

VANILLA

Vanilla sits in the Amber Family but seems to belong more distinctly in the Gourmand group. Just recently I received three huge bundles of vanilla pods from Mauritius and have spent hours deseeding them for the tinctures and infusions. I am all vanilla'd out at this stage. 

It is a sweet warm powdery note which can sit in the heart or the base.

Aromatic profiles : VETIVER

AROMATIC PROFILES : Vetiver

VETIVER

The smell of Bali Indonesia

If you spend any time in on the island of Bali in Indonesia, you will quickly come to associate it with the smell of vetiver roots.

These roots are used to make handbags, tie backs for curtains, placemats, bracelets , shopping baskets etc etc.

The smell of the dried vetiver roots is subtle and altogether delightful - more endearing than the oil which smells like grassy wet earth. it has a strong musty smell like a damp abandoned cellar under a jungle house. It is a wood family oil and classified as a heart but also a base note and definitely has masculine leanings 

My friend found some plants in the gardens of a shopping mall near nelspruit - which we dug up with a blunt stick and now I have small vetiver plants starting to show green on my patio. The start of a mini vetiver farm ! 

Aromatic profiles : OAKMOSS

AROMATIC PROFILES : OAKMOSS

This very precious and special ingredient has to be one of my very favourite oils - made from the lichen which grows on oak trees in Morocco and Yougaslavia.

It is solvent extracted and forms part of the Woody group of notes.

Now banned in the EU ( and causing huge heartache amoung purist perfumers ) due to the high number of people who are allergic to it. How pitifully short sighted .

My argument is that masses of people are allergic to peanuts but peanuts don't get banned outright. Packages have to carry warnings ....... so why not with Oakmoss ? seems crazy to throw the baby out with bathwater as the saying goes.
Well, I am jolly glad that I live in Africa and can use whatever I like to make my perfumes . Believe me - oakmoss and I have a great future ahead

It has a deep rich mossy earthy woody smell. You can really appreciate the mossy aspect - it reeks of the forest floor with compost and cool wet earth. I know it has incredible carrying capacity and extends the life of a perfume hugely.

I am in love .............

Making Tinctures and Infusions : Fresh Vanilla Pod Extract

MAKING TINCTURES AND INFUSIONS


Yesterday I had a visit from my customers Zabeen and Pana who have a store in Mauritius

and just imagine my delight when they presented me with a precious wonderful gift .....
three huge bundles of fresh vanilla pods from madagascar

Ooooh sheer DELIGHT

I immediately set about airing them in the warm sun to prevent mould from forming as they are still fresh and soft and moist

I had Desteney and Julia sitting for a couple of  days removing the vanilla caviar pod by pod and then mixing them with Vodka for a vanilla tincture and a spearate concoction of Jojoba oil for an oil based version

 This is going to be sooooooo yummy in a few months' time - just can't wait

Aromatic Profiles : Cedarwood

AROMATIC PROFILES : Cedarwood

I do love the woody notes in perfumery 

they have something grounding and solid and timeless

my body resonates with them and they seem ageless and robust - not frilly and pretty like a party dress

Cedarwood is gummy and resiny for me and a little mysterious. Perhaps that is because it comes from Morocco - from the Atlas Mountains and it carries the DNA of nomads and itinerants roaming in exotic places.

Although the picture shows needles and one would expect pine smell - I don't really get a pine smell.

Initially it smells a little like cough mixture . It is a base note  with powdery notes . I am unable to smell the powder at this stage

Aromatic profiles : Clary Sage

AROMATIC PROFILES : CLARY SAGE

Part of the sage family botanically speaking , Clary Sage is an aromatic in perfumery terms.

the entire plant is steam distilled in its native Russia and Hungary.

It smells quite green and grassy moss to me - with a bit of fennel/dill liquorice fern like greens in there. There is definitely a twigginess which leans towards nuttiness. A little bit of mouldiness comes thorugh on the strip and it makes me think of an old watermill smell without it becoming like musty socks !

I like the grassiness it delivers and have yet to really discover the versalitility of its modifier note status.

I found it to be medium in volatility becoming more pastel over time.

I think I can smell the gerianol but am not completely sure.

This is when I wish I had fellow students to bounce ideas off while sitting together - sniffing !

Studying remotley certainly has it challenges