Party

A private post.... W. turns 50. A little party brings together circles of friends..... in a restaurant right opposite the street. Here's the restaurant link.
More perfumery related issues: Next week. Enjoy your weekend and caress your noses with beautiful scents!

Music for 18 musicians, and pirouettes with orris

- - Do not forget to post on May 14th, Mother's day: Your comment counts! (see benevolent blogging)--

Right now I am listening to Steve Reich’s music for 18 musicians. It is soothing, soft, somewhat minimalist and repetitive, distinctively Steve Reich, a genre that W. calls aquarium music. Amalgamating with the chords, showers of muscle tension running down my back, beauty flowing in and out, xylophones dancing with violins. On the table in front is the l’art-pour-art orris trial, sprayed on paper strip, last version, citrus chords filling the empty space left by the xylophones, dancing grapefruit with bergamot, a rose hardly detectable, spicy freshness, clean and bright yellow mixes with the brown, beige melody of Reich’s masterpiece, which becomes more dramatic: What were soft circles turns more edgy, lines of red showing up, voluminous, powerful and tearing on the heart, beauty can hurt. Beauty must hurt. When I heard this music the first time, I had tears in my eyes, I found myself placed in the theatre of life, standing in a stream of people, rushing through their days, I was lifted up, opened up my arms and found myself dancing in pirouettes above caravans of cars on their way downtown, men running through cities, going through their day as if they had discovered eternity, I saw planet earth filled with life, and joyfully I left for an other galaxy, leaving a tail of light behind me, little stars that would fall down on earth again and bring comfort to all that I left behind.

The scent emanations from the strip continue to circle around a soft, vibrant core with a polished iris. With all its light, it still allows the woody chords to appear that are precious: agarwood, sandalwood and frankincense. And finally Ambergris is showing itself and now that it is here it will never leave again. The scent play never becomes dramatic, it circles forth and back, modestly, yet I feel a brilliance and clarity that I wished. Steve Reich on the other hand has crossed the central, dramatic highlight and lets us return from the galaxies, he leads us to a wide open horizon with the sun leaving in a sea of red, promising tomorrow, just like a mother sitting on your bed, after your exciting day full of adventure, placing her soft hand on your head, blessing you, sending you to dream land, with the promise that there is eternity.

Benevolent blogging

Here’s an interruption to this blog’s perfumery, sometimes self-centred routine.

Thanks to Katie we are given the opportunity to use our blogs once for good. It is simple to participate; don’t run away now, you can do something good without being mother Theresa ;-)

The idea is simple, yet effective. Bloggers will give to charity a set amount for each comment post they get on Mother's day on their blogs. Simple enough, isn’t it? You post, I pay, to a charity: FINCA International Thus, I am proud to announce that on May 14, Mothers day, this blog will do exactly that (as tauer perfumes has neither a charity budget, nor an advertising budget, the contribution will be by Andy personally)

!!!!What you can do!!!!!

Now, read carefully:

You have a blog of your own? -> visit benevolent blogging and join!

You visit this blog of mine from time to time. And you already post comments? -> visit on May 14, post your comment as usual and I will contribute 1 $ for every visitor commenting.

You visit this blog of mine but you do not comment, yet? -> visit on May 14. And post your first comment on this blog, just say hello or byebye or I love you or anything else. I does not matter what you tell. I will contribute 1$ for every visitor commenting.

!!!!Please!!!!

Bottom line: I know you are out there, reading. On May 14 it is time to comment, once, please….

!!!!What you get!!!!

Ah… I forgot. There is something in for one of you…besides going to heaven and reaching paradise much faster:

I will (random, promise!) pick one of you who posted a comment. Therefore, leave something unique in your comment, like your name or a number or so. Happy comment poster who is picked randomly by myself or the fortune master W. will be given a perfume of mine, le Maroc pour elle, 50 ml, or the L’air du désert marocain, 100 ml, your choice which perfume you would like, sent priority to wherever you like. The happy winner will be announced and I will ask you to send me your address to forward a nicely packed perfume bottle.

Düdeldi

Hurray! Spring is here, it is raining much warmer than before.

Yesterday evening I did the google thing again, sitting in front of a screen and looking at hyperlinks appearing magically after entering “tauer perfume” in a little box. Sometimes, I just need it and look for links that are new, people talking about my scents without me knowing. Please, do not consider myself an ego-manic google high ranking knight, I am rather Mr Curious, looking for what others think and what I might learn from them. Thus, I sometimes enter other words in this google box, like “search for the holy grail” or “rabbits conquering the world” or other non-sense and follow the hyper-paths to unexplored territory.

Bottom line: I ended up on Makeupalley.com and found some witty comments on the Le Maroc pour elle, some of them somewhat critical, some rather enthusiastic. To follow part of this debate: Please follow this link. But besides this ego soothing revelation that people talk about my perfumes, there is another aspect that I find worth thinking about as perfumer and as perfume lover. It is the democratization aspect of the e-media and its effects on perfumery. I am convinced that these blogging and forum discussions on perfumes will sooner or later translate into a new power in perfumery business, complementing the journals and others. To some extend it already has. And I am convinced that some of the electronic meeting places will soon find themselves in cosy embracement by the big players. Is this bad? No, not all. There is room for all of us.

Wrapping things up and a message from the surgeon

Yesterday saw me reading a lovely comment on my perfumes on this blog’s comments page. It was one of this weekend’s highlights helping me through painful Orris trials (more later) and…being in love with these words, I will copy them into this post. I want Google to find this precious comment. Funny enough, I never really thought about it, Google does not seem to find comments (does it?) on blogs. Which is strange. Isn’t it part of this medium’s key features having sort of moderated discussion enabled?

Another highlight was yesterday’s jogging with sore muscles and aching bones due to hard gardening and my 40 years presence on planet Earth with some impact on my body’s regeneration capabilities. I could hardly move anymore on Saturday evening…Thus, while enjoying my endorphins finally soothing my body and mind, finding a jumping rhythm through spring woods with fresh luscious green, I imagined how to write a couple of posts. Posts, describing where I am for my Orris fragrance. I dreamt of discussion more or less all individual ingredients that go in there. One after the other, starting with the base notes, moving on the middle and top notes, eventually grouping some of them. Tonight I will decide. Maybe this blog will see a few posts in a row that deal with one fragrance from a surgical point of view, dissecting things. Kind of an anatomy session for perfume lovers.

Good idea? I don’t know. The trouble with surgery: The detailed investigation of the individual parts does not tell you all about the intact patient.

So here it is my weekend’s comments highlight including hope to come closer to my Sheik (Flora, I hope this is ok…): “Hello Andy, I got my Luckyscent samples today, and I must say that I will not be ordering any more samples of Tauer perfumes - because my next purchase from them will be a FULL bottle of L'Air du desert marocain!

I love both of them - I am sitting here sniffing both arms obsessively. Le Maroc is so rich and opulent, I would use it only for evening I think, it is certainly not suitable for my office. It is hypnotic, sexy, amazing!

But L'Air - it is magnificent! I love the idea of spicy Oriental style perfumes, but so many of them are far too sweet. This has the spicy depth and richness without being overly sweet. It just gets better as it dries down, and I adore it. I can see how it would be wonderful on a man, but I want to wear it myself, they can't have all the fun. The incense, the wood, the leather, all so good yet not a cliche' "masculine" scent at all!

Sorry I don't know any rich barons or sheikhs - but I bet I could catch one if I wore your perfume....“

money issues = difficult issues

The truth is: I guess I am not a good business man... at least in some fields of business I am not that good. Maybe, I do not take money serious enough.

The issue is...again.... samples. The problem is as follows:
We do not want to make lots of money with samples. But neither I, nor Medival art & vie, Pascal, can afford to pay for our sending them into the wide, wide world, as we do not have a real marketing budget yet. (I devote some private money into marketing experiments but this is another story...)

Actually, it is rather simple:
Price of a sample = 3.5 $ US (our fees for paypal not counted)

Price of 1 packaging card board thing: 0.55 $
Price of 1 sample packaging flyer estimated: 0.10$
Price of 1 sample vial: 0.4$
Price of shipment Economy: 2.8-3 $ US
Sums up to: ca. 3.9 $ US, with the wonder fragrance that goes in there not counted, putting it together not counted,...
I never did a tough calculation as such, but Pascal brought me there ...

Bottom line of this post: Such is reality.
It is time to meet this rich sheik, eventually when he visits Zurich to cash in some of his oil dollars on his secret Swiss bank account?

News from Zurich

Being a niche perfumer means to constantly look for opportunities to be present and making sure that people at least know you are out there. This is difficult. And I appreciate everybody spreading the message that we exist….. We have basically zero marketing budget and I have to compensate missing resources by creativity. Thus, it really was a pleasure to prepare an interview yesterday, also because I loved the questions and issues addressed. More: Will follow once it is published ….surprise, surprise!

Then, there is a little news which dominated yesterday’s local TV station: Our Böögg is stolen, kidnapped by leftist activists, from the garage of Mr. Böögg builder. Well, what is a Böögg you might ask! a short intro you find here>> and some pix of the past you will find here >> It is kind of a white snowman, about 3 meters tall, made of paper and fabric, fully loaded with little explosives. Next week it is supposed to end up on a huge bonfire, like every spring, with half Zurich watching it on TV or live, after a parade of what used to be the guilds of Zurich and is now sort of upper-middle-lower class carnival. Bottom line: The Böögg is stolen and there is a piece of information that tells you probably more about us here in Zurich, than reading entire books about Swissness and the Zurich way of doing things. Believe it or not: We have every year a second, extra Böögg built, kind of an insurance in case it might be needed!

Finally, I have my little brochure done, except for the French translations which will be done in the coming days. The purpose of this A4 piece of paper: Being sent with every sample, telling clients in one, two sentences who we are and what’s in the perfume. It is intended to complement the flyer (seen before) holding the sample pump spray vials. It will be folded twice in a way that the front page features my little cowboy with his hat. Thus, things get into place. By the way, a similar little brochure is sent with every sample of l’air du désert marocain or the Maroc pour elle. Again…. trying to set a standard and to get noticed as independent perfumery.

Explaining things, poodles in the garden and a rose in Nirvana

I often compare perfumery with painting, a perfumer being a painter working with scents, trying to find the perfect form and colour. From time to time I feel attracted to working in 2 dimensions with colours, too. I like to work with oil based paint, mixing yellow with ultramarine and producing shades of green. I love the smell of sesame oil, and the thick slurry finding its way to the canvas where it ultimately will render the image of …. a lemon! Ha…and everyone will say: “yeah, that’s a lemon”. Cool! And if they don’t recognize it… then it’s abstract. ”yeah, that’s kind of modern. Cool!”

Now, in perfumery things are not that easy in a first approximation, especially if working with naturals. Staying with the colours analogy: Although there are thousands of shades of –let’s say- green, at the end of the day you mix yellow and blue and what you get is: Green. What do you get if you mix rose absolute with pepper essential oil? A peppery rose, a rosy pepper, eventually, if you do it right, an accord which is new and more than just the individual components overlaid. This new accord, however, will be received very differently by individuals. You might describe the perfume note by stating that it is rose with pepper, but this does not explain things to perfume lovers.


What is a spicy flower for the one, will be the scent of the family poodle after a day in the summer garden for others. Now, fur as scent carrier, including human being’s hair, that’s another topic for a lengthy post; it is just amazing how long and intense some scents are conserved in fur. Try it out: Spray your eau de toilette on your hair… it will last for ever. Thus, the fur of my mom’s poodle smelled wonderfully of dog (dry variant), fresh earth and spring last Monday afternoon after a one hour walk in the nearby woods.

But back to the accord thing….I realized this point again lately, when cruising on Colombina’s wonderful perfumesmellingthings blog, where she was slightly disappointed about some (missing) notes, expecting a particular note based on the ingredients list of a fragrance. And I came across this point when doing my reading about client’s expectations of le Maroc pour elle on perfumes of life and other platforms, which I love to do… it is always enlightening. Perfume lovers discussed there on the rose of Le Maroc, their expectations and what the scent was like. Thus, with all its lovely (and lots of) rose absolute (from Morocco and from Bulgaria), Le Maroc pour elle is not a rose scent. The rose absolute with its hundreds of components is there and it is not. It is a rose which has undergone a mystical (and chemical) transformation, it is a rose in Nirvana, in the garden Eden, where it is blooming in new forms and colours.
Thus, where is the point in describing what’s in it anyway, you might ask….

White spots

I am convinced white spots are mankind’s destiny. We look on our maps and search for white areas. There where no names of hills, no roads, and missing signs for villages indicate vague, unknown land we expect adventure and discovery. We dream of fortunes, of gold and wisdom, and of untold stories enlightening mankind. We visit these places wherever they are, we endure dangerous voyages to the unknown and finally paint colours and shades on our map, filling out another white spot. Usually, we spend a fortune doing so and unfortunately we do not seem to learn too much.

These and similar thoughts accompanied me while hiking on Friday in a cartographically exhaustively explored area of this world. Close to Lake Konstanz, with regular signs placed on the banks of river Rhine, warning us of touching birds (alive or dead) because of H5N1. Crossing a battlefield of 1799?, the French versus the Russians, one of many Napoleon battle fields. Not, that you would realize it. It is just a nice, somewhat swampy place, but there are books, for sure, with maps showing where the Russians stood and how the French positioned their canons.

Yet, no map indicates (up to now and to my knowledge) that you’ll find Viola odorata there….. hmmm…. What a perfume! Mix it with the fragrance of wet soil, after exhaustive rain over night at low temperatures of a delayed spring, leading ultimately to my soar throat, with the crispy freshness of grass trampled by your knees while you’re trying desperately to archive this particular flower on your camera’s 1GB micro drive and you have yet another white spot… in perfumery. To create this perfume would be a spot worth filling, I won’t do it, however, I have saved its digital image on my hard disk and the fragrance in my nervous system. Bottom line: Our frantic search for white spots is perfectly ok

difficult issue

So it is Easter, soon. And actually, I wanted to write a meaningful post featuring this topic. But, as with some other religious feasts I have my troubles. I like the bunny aspects of Easter, you see bunnies everywhere and for a bunny lover like myself this is cool. Bunnies hopping over green grass in the name of big banks, bunnies on my stock trading platform, bunnies innocently spreading marketing messages all around Christian homeland.

Then there is the real story behind it that I tend not to understand; it so complicated, guilt here and there, a somewhat embarrassing story, death and misery and an up and down of bodies and spirits that is hard to get. The women in this story, as in most biblical stories, degraded to a rather passive role of innocent observers. Poor mother Maria loosing her son who came under cross fire of an empire that fought, 2000 years ago, war in places almost as far as Bagdhad is from Washington DC. And as in every war, people suffer, mothers loose their sons, children their friends and many loose their innocence and fill their hearts with darkness that will never disappear.

And then there is what happened with the story in the years that passed since then. Strange things happened indeed, with the bunnies being a charming side aspect, churches were built and burnt in the name of, bonfires were lit not to celebrate in happy circles, but to purify the world from the bad, including bad people. Of course, there were and are human beings who did good in the name of, sometimes I just wonder whether these heroes with open hearts really needed this particular story book. Maybe they would be good people with reading Mickey Mouse, too?

Thus, a difficult issue…. To sooth myself, I listen to Sufi chants, not really very Christian, but … it is in the same name of.

I hope these chants will sooth you too (MP3 File, ca. 5 MB, click here) and send you all my fragrant Easter wishes.

Peace upon you. O Messenger of God. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O beloved of God and His Chosen One. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O Seal of the prophets and messengers. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O Leader of those who are rightly guided and who follow your example. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O you whom God has guided in the Straight Path. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you. O you whom God has made compassionate and benevolent with the believers. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for a servant said , “ My Lord is God.” May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for a servant became devoted in submissiveness to his Lord. May God bless you and your people.

Peace upon you, for things are sustained by their Lord.

Text and music from:

(Musica Sufi Andalusi, Misticismo, Omar Metioui, “ Cantos misticos de la Cofradia al – Harraqiyya)

Message to Jane

Message to Jane
Not much to tell my fellow readers today, except for a few messages: This blog’s programme for the holiday break due to Easter -> After tomorrow’s post I will make a posting break until Tuesday. In the mean time I will fool around with a little leaflet, Le Maroc pour elle bottles and will hopefully do some sniffing exercises.

Then I have a message for Jane: The samples are on their way again, priority mail. I guess there is no way preventing from time to time, and luckily rather rarely a sample vial break although packed in cardboard and bubble foil… except for sending them as a real parcels, but this would mean at least 3 times higher shipment costs. This is due to Swiss post shipment cost exploding once the thickness of anything goes beyond 2 cm….But, as I am not pleased with this situation, I will meditate on it while watching the full moon tonight.

Finally, a word on a thought that pops up every two weeks again, bothering me somewhat. Coco Channel (you remember?) supposedly said something like “apply perfume everywhere where you want to be kissed”, answering a question of where to apply fragrances. Thus…. A warning to my beloved perfume wearers: Do not spray on your lips!

do good

I have a friend who is very successful in business and one of his mottos is “do good and talk about it”! Maybe that’s one reason why he is successful…..

Well, I haven’t really done anything good the last 24 hours, but some good things happened, so let’s talk about these. One good thing is a post on PerfumeOfLife.org, featuring Le Maroc pour elle, which is so lovely; I can not resist copying part of it….” Not one note stands out to me… such a smooth blend of notes, so harmonious that I can’t tell where one leaves off and another begins. ……” The complete thread you find here...>>
Then, finally, my rose samples from Essencia arrived. Moroccan damask rose and Bulgarian rose, damask, too. I haven’t smelled the absolutes, yet, but I am optimistic to find a second supplier for these two critical components in Le Maroc pour elle. As there are a few crucial components in rose absolues from a safety and labelling point of view, (methyleugenol!), I appreciate the idea of having a supplier with a reliable analytical department! Another aspect of perfumery… the constant hunt and search for ingredients and reliable suppliers.

open discussion and shocks

Edmond Roudnitska, le ParfumLe beau parfum est celui qui nous procure un « choc ». Un choc sensoriel qui ébranle nos humeurs en première approche, mais suivi d’un choc psychologique d’autant plus durable que le parfum développe alors sa forme posément au fil d’une évaporation ralentie, de telle sorte que si cette forme est originale elle s’inscrira dans notre esprit qui ne l’oubliera pas et la reconnaîtra à la première nouvelle rencontre. Pour être belle cette forme devra répondre à notre attente de nouveauté et posséder les qualités fondamentales du grand parfum : caractère, vigueur, pouvoir, diffusant, délicatesse, clarté, volume, persistance.
(literally and with some mistakes translated into english) A beautiful perfume is the one which brings about a shock. A sensual shock that irritates our senses at first, but followed by a psychological shock which lasts the longer with the perfume developing its form, following a slowed evaporation scheme; this in a way that with the form being original it will inscribe itself in our mind which will not forget it and recognize it at the first following encounter. In order to be beautiful, this form must answer our expectation of novelty and harbour the fundamental qualities of a grand perfume: Character, force, power, diffusion, clarity, volume and lasting power.

This week’s lengthy introduction with Roudnitska again is due to my reading a thread on PerfumeOfLife about my perfumes. It is an interesting debate, even if the bottom line is: There are people writing about my two perfumes that do not like them (at first sight?). Believe it: This is tough reading exercise for me, raising mixed feelings.

Somehow, it is just like sending your blond little baby to school, proud on her new pink ribbon in her beautiful angel like hair and have her come home later, crying because her school friends made fun of her, calling her pony blonde. Thus, the perfumer who spent weeks, months, trying to get the best rose absolue from Morroco and this patchouli that is so hard to get with the expensive sandalwood and trying to balance these naturals with the synthetics to create his dream scent is faced with perfume lovers associating “hemp shop”. Snieff. The perfumer is shocked, too ;-)

But then I read the other comments on this thread and couldn’t but smile because they very much condensed this dislike and unease with my perfumes to Roudnitska’s sentences on the sensorial shock. I talked about it before on this blog and the longer the more I think Roudnitska was very right (see above).

Finally, there are two, three things to add:
-> If a beautiful perfume means one that brings about a shock, the reverse is not true. Not every sensorial shock is an indication for a good perfume.
-> Although I never visited a hemp shop and therefore can not fully appreciate this association, I think I know where this association comes from: It is the smoky underline in the air du désert …..
-> The hyacinth blooms in my garden right now, fighting with rain that pours since 24 hours and it amuses my nose, guides my fingers across the synthetics shelf, trying to come up with a very synthetic, no hippie-hemp shop kind of hyacinth reflection…..
Follow the discussion on Perfume of Life here…

Gravity suspended

Although scientifically not proven yet, I am convinced that gravity on earth is changing on a daily basis. There are days when even the smallest step you make brings you forward just like walking on moon, but contrary to Apollo heroes of the 60ties, we jump around on earth without the hassles of providing us with oxygen or protecting us from radiation that kills everything. Except for some microbes eventually flying accross the universe, seeding live in other galaxies. An interesting line of thought anyway, thinking that our earth might seed live on other planets...
Well, yesterday I clearly felt how gravity lost its grip for a few seconds, while buying beans in the supermarket. Lucky me, I bought a few kilogramm of various dried beans, holding me down in the groceries department, otherwise I would have ended up in the upper floor department, selling shirts for men, which is as dangerous a place for modern men as the Tyrannosaurus rex nest was for our mammal ancestors.
I talked with Juvena's Vice-president on the phone in the olive oil department and she said: "Just do it. We wish you all the luck. But please, do not register the name independently, call us first if you wish to register your lonestar memories."
- Promise: I will.
Pix: Perfumer, in zero gravity environment (trampoline)

angry

Today, anger.
Not that I care too much about money. I hope it is there and tend to use it. But yesterday... I got the bill from Swiss customs. For a parcel, containing basically paper, value 55 Euro something, coming from Germany, I am expected to pay 54 Francs to customs: something like 6 Francs is taxes, 10 Francs is handling, 38 Francs seems to be special handling charges. What for? Are they nuts?
The good thing about it: I immediately had an idea for an anger perfume,....You know, materialisation of all those bad thoughts and negative energy, transformed into a scent condensing it all.
So, we are talking.. Coumarin, Castoreum, Vanillin, Patchouli for the lasting anger the next day

Cumin aldehy, Irone, decenal-4-trans (lots!), cistus, jasmine, geranylbutyrate in between
and the first rage outbreak by galbanum, linalool, clary sage, lemon grass, ylangylang, bergamot

hmmm... sniffing my wrist and forgetting about it all.
;-)

Rotten beaver, vanilla traps and some thoughts more

Around a weak ago, a group of synthetic beavers walked into an orris garden, sent there by a perfumer. Stupid perfumer thought his little orris garden needed some more depth and a twist to the dirty side. Well, the perfumer still feels the same. He is not entirely pleased with his garden, yet. The entry with its spicy roses and the pepper plants look lovely, but somewhere in the middle, before you enter the little forest in the back, it misses this earthy, animal quality. Thus, he sent his beaver army off and thought that vanilla might be a good companion, too. Eventually, his judgment was right, but the army of beaver trampled down quite a bit of his nicely arranged garden, leaving his roses untouched, but entirely destroyed his incense corner, and the worst was the vanillin pond where some of the beavers got so depressed that the weakest among them gave up and went there where all beavers have to go one day. And with no one cleaning up this mess, their physical remains remind the gardener that there is be a beaver heavenly paradise where his furry friends dance and sing the songs of eternal happiness and praise true perfume artists.

Well, bottom line of all this: the pepper line and rose start = ok. Orris with incense woody lines, sparkling and radiating =ok. But I still think, there is a touch of deepness missing in the overall composition. And the agarwood is a marvellous scent, deep, intense, lasting, expensive, but to tie it in, to have it there from the very beginning, to prepare the stage with the right light on is a tricky one. Maybe the difficulty is there: You have an image of a scent in your mind, which is not the complete picture, it is a reflection, an abstraction of it. And this abstraction you want to see become reality in a composition, without bending your image. We work on it….

Finally, with the end of this week approaching I need to start some thinking about public appearance, communities and how to get known as niche perfumer. Basically it is about circles, knowing them, entering them and leaving them. Marketing again….

I can feel how they laugh about me

Nice about words on paper or LCDs: They don’t cry when being bended. Silently they sit there, waiting for the omnipotent writers to put an end to their pathological desire of picturing a universe by a set of 20 words. The patchwork assemblies of letters just wait for the next genial idea of this strange god sitting thoughtful in front of his screen, facing their sudden death with the touch of a button and to resurrect within 5 minutes again. They smile and know. It is there, the perfect assembly of words, but this strange god just wouldn’t listen to them……

Thus, I bended my words to describe my leather universe using 3 lines in the flyer. The revenge of letters…I can feel how the laugh about me.


A scent created on memories of a wide land,
open pastures, earthy leather, warm smoke,
being there, I am free and true.

Ein Duft der Erinnerung an ein weites Land,
offene Weiden, rauhes Leder, warmer Rauch
Dort, wo ich wahr und frei bin.

French ....

Niche calling

I called Juvena and discussed with the right person, asking questions and explaining things. Well, to make things short, a final go/no-go decision is postponed until Thursday when we will discuss again. The person in charge will consider my case which seems to be somewhat unusual. And, as I am gifted with some imagination and in light of my 40 years on planet earth enriched with quite a few surprises, I am not amazed and somehow understand their point: They have invested into a trade mark and although they do not use it anymore, the enterprise feels somewhat uncomfortable giving away what they consider their property. I guess neither she nor me is on the spot legally competent enough to know in all details what their rights really include and how far they could go in protecting them. That’s lawyer business. As W. said the other day: “You shouldn’t have asked them anyway.” Well, I guess right he was, but I prefer it the other way. I am scared of lawyers and –if feasible- try to avoid their company, at least in business matters.

And I got a number, a first approximation for how much I could buy the trade mark “Lonestar”. Oups. I guess the time has come for travelling to Dubai, meet a happy sheik, let him fall in love with my leather scent and tell him that the only way to get the perfume is by buying for the trade mark rights. Positive side effects would be: A day on the Dubai beach, shopping for Frankincense coming from nearby Oman, and eventually opening a shop in one of those huge, fancy shopping malls.

I will continue working on the flyer until I take a few days off for this Dubai venture….

Next might be a note on words that do not flow and the iris-agarwood thing

Hippie

I mentioned it earlier: I found a place to shop for ropes nearby and the best thing about it: They have a factory shop, open every first Saturday in the month. The bottom line: These people still produce ropes in Switzerland, which is hard to believe and in light of the ongoing de-industrialization close to a miracle.

Thus, under a blue sky, windows down, camera ready, my old Saab brought us to a place called Ossingen, 30 miles from Zurich, where a sales lady already waited for the perfumer (I send them a mail before visiting) and showed the best smelling hemp ropes you could imagine. I haven’t found the exact time and place in my past yet where this scent of hemp fits but it clearly evokes memories. It is not smoking hemp stuff, it is more the scent of my father’s garden where he used to tie up things with hemp ropes; or the scent of our cellar, maybe, where we would store apples and some vegetables over winter.

Well, be it: Saturday afternoon I became a proud owner of 200 meters lovely smelling hemp rope, 10 cents a meter, with a similar texture like the sisal thing, but much more authentic. Thank you, Anya…..which brings me to the end of this post. A last word on the hippie thing, brought up by Anya in her comment that found hilarious. When preparing the “Our perfumes in the press” internet web site on tauerperfumes.com, I realised that Luca Turin referred to “Le Maroc pour elle” as hippie scent in his Park Avenue review. I totally forgot about it, but now…the pattern is there again. Am I a hippie producing hippie scents? And….what’s a hippie anyway?

Spring wishes for the weekend

The first primula came through, the sun is shining and not even the letter from Juvena bothers me today (telling me that they invested a lot in the name, and I could buy it if I want. ....well, I would if I could....)
More about this developing story next week! (how about "campfire memories", "Prairie memories","Sommerville memories"....?)

My best wishes for the weekend and did you know there is a auricula and primula society?

pix: some kind of primula, seen this morning in my garden