Alchemy and the Power of More (and Less)

There is one imperative with natural perfume, an artistic one. That some natural perfumes have aromatherapeutic value, while itself important, is not the point of natural perfume. I feel strongly that this art is the highest of all arts. I make this grand statement only because I myself have practiced numerous arts so I feel justified. I've been, and still am, a writer in various genres, but I've also been a professional photographer and graphic designer, a jazz musician, a spoken word artist, and an actor. In my mind, natural perfume ties all these arts together into a complex, incredibly rich, and emphatically spiritual endeavor.

For many of us, natural perfume is a multi-sensory experience, showing us colors and music and poetry. Needless to say, because of this fact, inspiration is never hard to come by. I know perfumers who base their perfumes on their favorite paintings, or their favorite classical music, or their favorite literary works. How could a perfume be based on such things? You see, this is where the magic of the art comes in: each individual decides for her or himself how, say, a sculpture might inspire a perfume. And we all have different sources of inspiration; for some it could be a beautiful lady (I myself am guilty here, as charged), or a beautiful day, or a play.

The possibilities are as endless as there are people on the planet, and certainly as rich as the wild earth Charles Darwin saw when he wrote, "It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose." Ah, yes, Mr. Darwin, but we natural perfumers have a purpose for much of what the earth provides. The real art of it lies in compounding perfumes which speak to, sum up, and reflect the various facets of this great blue marble, the memories, the joy, the fantasies. We all have fantasies and natural perfume, all of perfume, speaks to no one if it isn't, even just a small bit, fantastic.

How does natural perfume work exactly? The gist of it is that you take a handful of aromatics and dissolve them in high-proof alcohol; solid perfumes are a tad different in that the aromatics need to dissolve in fixed oil. Many aromatic materials (but not all) need to be rendered usable before a perfume can be made with them. This means a hot-water bath must be used (benzoin, for example), the material must be diluted before use (orris butter, for example), or it must be macerated for some time in a substrate (ambergris, for example). I myself made my own ambergris oil-infusion, so determined was I to make solid perfumes with ambergris; I have the tincture as well.

In most cases we are on our own to render materials usable. From there, the building blocks are known as chords, or accords, one for each section, base, middle, and top. The conventional wisdom holds that a chord is three or four notes (see how nicely musical analogies work?); I use chords with anywhere from three to eight notes. I know I have my own ways of doing things. A perfume with 24 notes? Most perfumers balk at the idea, but in my experience that many notes are needed for a deep, bowl-you-over perfume experience. So the trick is this: learning to balance all that olfactory substance. The balance might come by way of contrast (ambergris and rose), or reiteration (rosewood and palmarosa), or a tiny touch of some particular ingredient (black pepper).

Natural perfumery is in fact descended from alchemy. While alchemy was considered part of science, many of the same principles apply: that apparent opposites might actually reinforce each other, that certain combinations are synergistic (patchouli, for example, has an amazing effect on rose; when the two combine, it suddenly smells as if you're sniffing a dozen fresh rose bunches, or a hundred rose bushes), that less is often a lot more (of a particular ingredient). In our art, which is also partly a chemical science, a little bit can go a long, long way, and a lot of it simply can't be explained.

More next time. Yours in fragrant delight,

Author: Adam Gottschalk

 Images: Buttercups by Ernst Vikne