Brave New Scents
A Natural Perfumers Guild Project
Who: Professional Perfumers of the Natural Perfumers Guild
Why: Because we’re brave outlaw perfumers, and we’re pushing the envelope further, into 21st Century fragrance territory.
Where: The Natural Perfumers Guild perfumer’s blogs and Internet blogs.
When: Launch Oct. 1, 2011
The Vision of this Project: The new avalanche of glorious aromatics, including the ones we create ourselves, deserve acknowledgement as perfume materials as the Outlaw Perfumers create Brave New Scents. The Outlaw Perfumers of the Natural Perfumers Guild are staking out more aromatic territory, moving into the 21st Century with an attitude of conquering new frontiers. The Guild perfumers are focusing on capturing the beauty of aromatics introduced after the year 2000, or that have been made available to us via the Internet after 2000, or that we created ourselves.
Many of these are untested by regulatory agencies. History is our guide, since many of these have been in use for hundreds of years, such as ambrette seed absolutes, kewda flower absolutes and others from India. As with any product, do a patch test, and if you get a rash, discontinue use. How brave, how sensible!
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it! ~ Miranda in Shakespeare's “The Tempest”, Act V, Scene I
In the Brave New Scents project, the Guild perfumers are likened to the members of Huxley’s novel, Brave New World. Like the starring characters in the novel, these brave new perfumers go against the grain and out of bounds, thwarting the ever-expanding regulatory nanny state in order to showcase aromatic extraction feats and use 21st Century aromatics that are not necessarily condoned in mainstream perfume society
I want God, I want poetry,
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin.
Perfume Organ Reference from Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World: “The scent-organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio – rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar, and new-mown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord – a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was a round of applause; the lights went up.”
Some of the brave new perfumers throw convention to the wind and blend perfumes that showcase their skill extracting scent from previously non-commercial plants, flowers, and substances. Others use the palette of newly-available essential oils, concretes, absolutes and CO2 aromatics, sometimes blending in their own artisan extractions, be they infusions, tinctures or distillations.
What aromatics will this include?
The Guild perfumers were provided with an extensive list of 100+ 21st Century aromatics, which was compiled by Guild President Anya McCoy and Guild Manager Elise Pearlstine. They recognized that before the year 2000, most artisan perfumers purchased their natural aromatics from aromatherapy suppliers. These suppliers did not carry many absolutes, and some aromatics available to the mainstream perfumers were not known, or available, to them. Suppliers for mainstream perfume houses did not carry many, if any, aromatics from India, such as jasmine sambac, lotus, champaca and other tropical scents. We now have the bounty of newly-available delightful absolutes such as aglaia flower, boronia, ambergris and many more. Newly-conceptualized and extracted aromatic wonders such as lilac flower and the amazing world of CO2 and SCO2 extractions are now available to the fragrance industry. Also included are the hand-extracted fragrant bounties from the gardens of the perfumers themselves, such as peony enfleurage, Grand Duke of Tuscany jasmine sambac enfleurage, and a myriad of distillations and tinctures. To make it interesting, the perfumers were allowed only one “wildcard” aromatic from the era preceding the year 2000.
Who: The perfumers of the Natural Perfumers Guild, and Internet Bloggers. Guild Professional Perfumers will participate. Invited bloggers will review the Brave New Scents perfumes (2) that they have been paired with. All bloggers will receive all 10 perfumes, and will review two of them, and the rest on their personal timetable, with the exception CaFleureBon which will review all ten.
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Natural Perfumers Guild Perfumers |
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Adam Gottshalk |
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http://lordsjesterinc.wordpress.com/ |
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Ambrosia Jones |
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http://perfumebynature.blogspot.com/ |
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Anya McCoy |
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http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com |
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Charna Ethier |
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http://providenceperfume.blogspot.com |
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Christi Meshell |
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http://matriarch.biz (not a blog) |
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Elise Pearlstine |
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http://bellyflowers.blogspot.com |
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Jane Cate |
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http://www.etsy.com/shop/wingandprayerperfume (not a blog) |
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JoAnne Bassett |
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http://www.joannebassett.com/natural_perfumes |
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Liz Cook |
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http://oneseedcompany.com/ (not a blog) |
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Rohanna Goodwin Smith |
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Bloggers |
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Diana Wiener Rosengard |
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http://femininethings.blogspot.com |
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Donna Hathaway |
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http://www.examiner.com/x-4780-Portland-Fragrance-Examiner |
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Dr. Marlen Harrison |
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http://theperfumecritic.com |
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Elena Vosnaki |
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http://perfumeshrine.com |
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Ines Stefanovic |
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http://alliam-aredhead.blogspot.com/ |
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