mystery of musk project available at DSH website!

Tonight it is just a little photo after spending the day uploading the new mystery of musk project perfumes to the website.  How exciting to unveil them!  I hope you will love all four versions:

1- musk eau natural-accord

2- musk of the mosque

3- musk eau natural

4- ESME : a chypre musk

Finally, it’s time for sleep!  Ah, glorious Sunday.

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the mummy presentations for DAM

The bottles are finished and ready to be unveiled at DAM’s gala tomorrow night.  Here’s a little preview for you:

hand blown bottles, sealed in beeswax, wrapped in gold wire, embellished with gemstones

each mummy presentation is wrapped in 'aged' cotton

ANTIU (aka METOPION) "mummy" presentation oil perfume

This is the most elaborate design we did.  We also did mini dram perfumes in super cute boxes of Cardamom & Khyphi, Arome d’Egypte and 1,000 Lilies (aka Susinon).  LOVE.

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flappers and pharaohs

While working along on the Mystery of Musk project with the NPG, I have simultaneously been researching a new project for the Denver Art Museum and their upcoming KING TUT show.

You would think that these two projects, Art Deco musk and Egyptian perfumes of the ancients would have nothing in common but there is a thread : the Art Deco movement was very much inspired by the culture and artifice of the Egyptians.  Thus the title “flappers and pharaohs” (which is also the title of the opening gala at the museum happening tomorrow night) and I have been BUSY creating Egyptian perfumes, based on ancient formulas that have come down to us through the Roman, Pliny the Elder and the Greeks Dioscorides and Theophrastus, in time to do a preview at the opening.

Today is the day it all comes together and we deliver the first bottles of “1,000 LILIES (aka Susinon), ANTIU ( aka Metopion), KENI (aka The Medesian), MEGALEION”, plus my own original designs Arome d’Egypte and Cardamom & Khyphi.  Some of the bottles will be hand blown glass embellished with lapis, carnelian, chalcedony, turquoise and pyrite beads wrapped in gold filled wire.  I don’t think they could be more beautiful.  So, I’m off to the studio to finish the project and get to Denver with these treasures, but I’ll be back tonight with some photos…  For now, I’m wishing you a glorious day.

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mystery of musk project – part 2

Sometimes I wonder about how my mind works.  I seem to get a different impression than everyone else and I wonder why.  Maybe I can take things too seriously.  This questioning comes up from time to time and has recently entered my consciousness as I have had a few of the Mystery of Musk Project submissions from other perfumers trickle into the studio.  To my utter surprise some of the perfume designs are utilizing notes that weren’t “on the list”.  Hmmm.  It gives me pause and I have to question myself: “Am I a literalist?”  Do I take things so literally as to sometimes miss it?  Maybe.  Anyway, my own understanding of the Mystery of Musk project was akin to Iron Chef (how to be creative with a limited palette), now I realize it was more like painting class (make your own interpretation). Oh. Ok.  I think I might have done the wrong homework.  But, since I went about the project with this ‘other’ idea in mind, I am nevertheless happy with engaging the challenge to interpret a musk perfume using no real (animal) or synthetic musks.

The question of how to make a botanical musk, of how to get a plant to speak the elusive language of an animal is intriguing.  You know like the childhood question: animal, vegetable or mineral? They seem somewhat mutually exclusive but for this perfume I will coax my plants and perhaps when they are all harmonized they will sing a song with an’ animalic dialect’.  I started thinking, too, that as musk notes are so closely associated with skin, intimacy, sex and attraction, that ‘nude’ would be my one word talisman for the scent.  Then the name came: musk eau natural (like au natural, or “in the buff” mixed with natural perfume usage: eau…).  Yep.  I like it.  I’m keeping it.

After deciding on the overall concept and giving it a name, I went to work and pulled out all the notes.  If you have ever smelled costus root oil, you will notice some things that are very interesting.  One, it has a strong but sweet musk-like odor and at the same time, well, a bit of “hefty bags” that comes up.  I kind of like it in a perverse way.  The same way that I like styrax for it’s sweet honey-spiced-leather-resin smell mixed with “airplane glue”.  It’s fun to sense the multiplicity of things and the potential that lies within.  Another note that I love is Cassis / Black Currant bud.  It smells of pine trees and cats; I am fascinated by it’s ability to push toward fruity / green and civet at the same time.  It’s a wonderful catalyst to activate other notes that might no be so easy to work with, like the carrot seed (which likes to stand out in many designs); seaweed, which can come off as flavorless and cumin, which is certainly musky but smells (especially to the American palate) a bit of ‘sweaty men’ and BO.  You have got to be careful with cumin.  It has a delicious sweet, musky spice but too much and you can end up with curried armpits. (In my opinion, fenugreek is better in armpits, but I digress).

With my ‘delicious list’ of notes in hand I went directly for a full-fledged musk only scent  – something really pure might be the way to go.  It’s version 1.  I used all of the notes on the list except for vetiver, patchouli and vanilla as they seemed too dominant to fashion a multifaceted botanical musk.  It just may be my personal favorite for it’s subtlety and that it leans toward my beloved ambergris (labdanum in this case), but I felt after letting it macerate that it was ultimately too soft and subtle to be submitted as a complete perfume design.  ( It will be available on my website soon:  musk eau natural (accord)-version 1 along with the other 3 Mystery of Musk designs).  I made a little diversion at this point with a new idea that came : musk of the mosque, or something like that.  Many old mosques have musk ground into the mortar so that when the sun warms the brick of the building, the fragrance is released.  This ancient, holy and reverent concept of musk is also quite  compelling; certainly as much as the attraction/sexual/intimacy side.  So, version 2 is more incense-laden and oriental in nature.  For version 2, I added in the vetiver, vanilla and patchouli and brought up the rose, labdanum and oud.  I really love this one as well.   Then the last inspiration hit.   The logo for Mystery of Musk was unveiled: an exotic beauty in flapper hairstyle standing nude behind a bottle.  Now it was back to a “nude” musk in an Art Deco style.  Oh yes.

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the mystery of musk project – part 1

Hello and welcome to my world!  This is an entirely new experience for me and it’s really exciting!  I am still on an extreme learning curve with wordpress, so I hope you will bear with me as I go.  Nevertheless, I thought that I would just jump right in with the announcement of “The Mystery of Musk” project that has just begun at the Natural Perfumer’s Guild.

I’ve had the good fortune to take part in a few collaborations before; some visual art interpretations through perfume design and even poetic concerns & imagery interpreted through perfume design.  But this project is something a bit different.  It’s a fascinating ‘brief’, if you will, to explore and construct a musk (animal in nature) built out of all botanical offerings.  (Well, there are actually a few animal based notes allowed: ambergris, beeswax, horax and goat’s hair.  Since I generally don’t use animal based products except for beeswax absolute, this is the only technically non-botanical note I have chosen to work with).  I also love this kind of challenge; it’s what many visual artists call a ‘limited palette’ work.  So, if this were a painting, I would choose, say, one black (there are many), one white (there are many)  and one other color with which to create my work.  All of the nuance and dynamics are suggested by juxtaposition; of which parts of the work intersect and connect and how those relationships tie the image together.  The same is true for a limited palette perfume.  You must make your design based solely on the prescribed ingredient list.

At first, I took the challenge quite literally: construct a musk.  OK.  let’s go.  Oh, wait, not so fast.  Did I mention the ingredient list?  Here goes: Ambrette seed and Angelica Root (Ambrette seed and angelica root are the only botanicals that contain macrocyclic musk, like the musk deer.) Also, Sandalwood, Labdanum, Vetiver, Spikenard, Oud, Vanilla, Musk Rose, Black Currant, Jasmine Sambac, Patchouli, Cumin, Black Pepper, Costus, Seaweed and Carrot Seed.  It’s a little like Iron Chef : ” Please make your gourmet menu entirely out of turnips”.  I am not saying that this wonderful palette of exotic notes are like turnips but what I am saying is that to the novice, creating a perfume, let alone a musk with these notes would make some pretty serious, yet fragrant, mud.  And, I can cook but I would not be able to make a gourmet meal out of turnips.  No way.

Happily, I am pretty familiar with historical musk perfumes as well as synthetic musks and how they tend to work in a perfume so it’s off to work to construct a botanical musk from the ingredients above that in as many ways as I can conceive of will smell like, feel like and maybe even act a little like the musks we all know.  So ends part 1.

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