From time to time one finds a producer of the highest quality oils and raw materials, as well as your base materials for perfuming. When you realize you have found a master in the craft who’s work can ultimately reflect your own, you realize you have discovered a sourcerer. I like to call these people sourcerers, a play on the word of course, but these artisans practice a secret art. This knowledge is coveted, and hard to learn. Each producer of raw materials and processed materials has their own trade secrets that keep them in buisness. Often times they only specialize in just their one soul product and are the master of producing just that. This is occult knowledge, this is secret esoteric knowledge. Its hard to learn! And when you meet and find a supplier that knows more then just one facet of the industry who emphasizes on the utmost quality, you’ve met a master, a master who goes to the source and knows it inside and out, who can do every step himself from harvest, to processing, to production, to the actual production of a high quality perfume, or fragrance product itself.
Through out the years I’ve had the fortune to have met, befriended, and learned from several sourcerers…
And become one myself… My past buisness venture was a boutique essential oil distillery, that my buisness partner is still running called Cascadia Terroir. I focused on the highest quality and ethics in wild crafting and harvesting possible, and the results made the difference… I could not find equal quality commercially outside of a small circle of artisan sourcerers.
Today I am happy to say that that circle is growing and I have discovered an other great sorcerer who has produced ethical civet, musk and other animalic scents as well as some of the highest quality and ethically harvested oils, which he processes himself.
Many people do not know the work that goes into the base ingredients to perfumes, or of their are even plant based oils or extracts in the perfume at all. How many metric tons of lemon balm does it take to distill one ounce of Melissa oil? What kind of solvents are needed for this extraction, what sort of still is required for this oil, what time of the season does this need to be harvested so that it is the highest quality in the end product a fine perfume?
This is what high perfumers pay for, these are also things that they themselves study, and these are also points that a perfume consumer needs be paying for instead of a fashion label with the cheapest ingredients possible. It is this knowledge and passion that is the basic foundation of a fine perfume, not just marketing aesthetics.
In this blog post I would like to bow low to the men and women in perfuming who are committed to producing the highest quality or product with the highest level of expertise and ethics. I would like to encourage the consumers to learn from these masters as well so they can understand quality when they smell it and so they can support the amazing artisans who are being replaced by scent chemists.
A big thanks to Dan Riegler master sourcerer!
Please be sure to read his blog post and learn the amazing things that go into the very first steps of creating a perfume.
I will be making very limited edition perfumes with his rare frankincense and civet essential oils shortly, these will be very special projects that I am very excited to share when they are completed!
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