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1 year blogging

heieiei... I am so nervous. It is my first birthday.

It is more or less a year now since I started blogging. Time to celebrate and share this somewhat special moment. This blog has seen some funny posts, strange posts, lots of typo’s and even more comments (Thank you all!) about life, perfumes and perfumery. I look forward to continuing tomorrow… but not here anymore. Starting tomorrow, I will post here:

www.tauerperfumes.com/blog

What you should do now.... there is (22.30 local Swiss time) still something there, waiting for you.....: Follow this link http://www.tauerperfumes.com/blog

Pictograms

So, this blog saw an interesting comment yesterday and I wanted to take the time to address the one point that I thought most interesting and challenging in Anya's comment.
What do I want the rose, or linalool or whatever to do? I changed the question to include synthetics.

The starting point: When I create a fragrance I basically make a very complex chemical recipe. Add 1 gr of linalool into flask, add 2 gr of limonen.... , allow to react for 30 days at room temperature, ....add ethanol, mix, allow to ....When working with naturals, this recipe becomes very, very complicated, but at the end it still is a recipe containing a set of chemicals that are mixed in a certain order, allowed to react and find an equilibrium, diluted in ethanol, filtered, bottled, sold. A comment on the side: Our scent of smell is capable of quite some abstraction. Take phenylethylalcohol, add some citronellol, citral, damascenon eventually and people will recognize the rose. It is a similiar phenomenon like our visial sense: Draw a few lines and people will recognize the tree, the house, the dog... that's the trick with pictograms. In this sense: Phenylethylalcohol is the pictogramm for the rose scent.

Now, what do I want? It depends... for a certain scent I want some molecules in this mix to be identifiable, to stand out and form a sensorial impression that is recognized by its closeness to something we know. Like the rose. Do I care to be as close as possible to the roses natural scent. Nope! I care for the concept of rose, eventually I want the rose to become symbolic, to be lifted into an idea.

Some of the molecules are intended to be there to form a new sensorial impression that is also recognized but as something new. This new impression is sort of a holy grail... lucky us: There are lots of these grails around and just have to find them.

And then there is also a supportive class of molecules in a sense. These molecules are there to bring others up but never bring themselves into the game. Helpful servers, modest but indispensable.

Linden blossom and petunia

Driving with my bike trough town this morning, the fragrance of fresh linden blossom woke my nose up. It is a true delight, precious and so far, I have not smelled anything synthetic that could replace it. There are some molecules that come close, some eventually might be combined to give this impression, but replace it? No. The natural linden blossom absolute that you can get does not have this wonderful elegance and freshness, sweetness, the airy neroli, the sexyness of jasmine and the lightness of lily-of-the-valley. It is a greenish scent with rather "wet-wood" undertones... thus: We have to enjoy the season and sniff as much as we can of this natural delight.

The same is true for my petunia, flowering in little pots, on the veranda. Deep, rich, vanilla, oakmoss and a sensual powder fills the surrounding in later afternoon. A true delight and the only reason why I have planted them anyway.

Besides sniffing these naturals... I look forward to sniff and learn some synthetics, like decahydro beta naphtylacetate (I hope I got it right), I love it but haven't mastered it, yet... this week will see me continuing the work started on the lavender, complementing what has been done over the weekend (more about it tomorrow), sending out some parcels, tell you more about a most astonishing meeting last Friday and talk about some business ideas....

blogroll

Things are getting in place for the blog on the other, non-blogspot, domain. I haven't done the blogroll there, yet but will do it in the coming days. I have, I must admit, neglected my blogroll on the blogspot-blog, too.... Thus, whenever you feel like your blog should be there on my blogroll....just mail me...

What else: Some secret stuff is going on in Zurich (hehehe...what I do is also secret ).... for all those who do not understand this little joke... please visit madebyblog. This secret mission kept me busy yesterday and I could write long, epic posts about my pain and my joy in doing this...hehehe... but it is a secret. Thus... wait and see.

old fashioned

After an epic fooling around with Excel, trying to get an overview about postage paid, cash in and cash out, I treated myself for 2 hours with working right away on the skeleton of yesterday. Lines of actions: Add some flesh to the base with tonka beans (replacing coumarin), vetiverol, a hint patchouli and vanillin, some ambrein to the cistus and oakmoss, up to the IFRA allowed limit. Adding hair and skin by addition of ionone, beta, phenylethylalcohol and iso-amylsalicylate to the orris line, and blood and nervous tissue by the addition of some methyl-pamplemouse (guessed right: brings in a citrus, green, vetiver line), linalool, linalylpropionate.

Humbly begging for attention, the preliminary result landed under W.'s nose, while Germany-Italy was still playing at 0:0. The comment was something like:" Hmmm ..that's new and interesting....move it and play that ball!.....it smells like.....ohhhh, again they can't keep the ball.....something....ahhh, what a chance..... something familiar, like a classic....go,go,go.... a little bit old fashioned".

Humbly returning to my computer, the formula changes were entered in excel and the perfumer entered in a thinking loop: Are my compositions old fashioned? Grummel-grübel-studier (no translation...). Well, looking back at last Saturday's sniffing meeting with Vero, old fashioned might turn out to be a compliment. We sniffed Que sais je?, by Caron. This, after scents that seem to have been created by Mr. 666, the bad beast, you name it, with the purpose to send our noses to a frozen universe, expanded endlessly, with not much more left than 0.1 degree Kelvin background noise. And then there came Que sais je. Tuberose, vanilla, civet, oakmoss, so fine, so rich, so yummy, with this wonderful orris story, powdery and lasting. A dream!

Now, coming back today to yesterday's trial: Somewhat too hairy: I have to shave this barbarian thing. It could need a little bit more vibrance energy at the beginning, it does not seem to know how to use its muscles yet, and I have give it a little bit more of a green powdery make-up.

a lovely day

Happy 4th of July to all my readers in the US, enjoy and celebrate!
In todays post we will visit together the skeleton of a scent. I worked for quite a while on the scent with Lavender. hmmm...I need a project/category name for it, because my new blog that will soon go live and replace my blogspot.com blog, allows me to easily create categories....hmmm... how about ....hmmm...can't think of anything clever as working title for this project of mine... I will have to ask Barry ;-)
Well, I worked on it, with the goal to come up with a sketch that is good enough to be followed further, approaching at least schematically the picture I have in mind. Looking back at it, I can clearly see how this draft might work; it will need much more to become wearable, but the basic lines might fit. The next step: Do it again and move on by decorating things out. I will leave the skeleton mix for maturation just to see how it develops over time.
Starting with what I had already (Okoumal, with a hint coumarin, kephalis, cistus, and castoreum, decatone) I moved on, carefully not to mess things up again. I added a fir line with bergamot to the top, an orris line (which will need careful fine tuning later, right now it is just a line) and sandalwood to the base.
And finally: The lavender...I have a large selection of various qualities at hand, not to miss the synthetic lavender boosters; I decided for a mix of my French lavender with the Bulgarian quality.
The synthetic boosters will come later, when I work on the flesh for this skeleton. Like testosterone doses added to your daily vitamine intake brings about muscles, reduces fat and makes you look like a handsome guy, boosters like linalool add volume to a lavender, bring down the sweetness and excessive flowery aspects. As with all things in live, it is just a matter of dose, too much and your lavender looses its natural appearance and looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his days as actor, before his botox time as governor....

Still life

When looking at my basil babies in front of the house yesterday evening, with the sun approaching the horizon and pouring an orange light over Zurich, I couldn't help realizing the allegory of things in front of me.I met with Vero on Saturday and we had an excellent exchange, and as always I came home loaded with ideas and impressions. I will talk a little bit about it tomorrow.
Thus, back to the still life in front of my house: A nice allegory for my approach of the lavender scent somehow, the only thing missing is the fir. You see the lavender on the right, visited by bees and butterflies in the evening, in full bloom right now. To the left are the petunia which smell awesome, vanilla-musk-powdery-animalic, and then there are the basil seedlings, not smelling much yet, but they will, green, green, green and somewhat camphorwood spicy, yummy! In front, there is the thyme. I have a lemon thyme essential oil from France and this is what I want to try this week with my lavender, complementing the touch vanilla that I try to bring in the back. In the back to the left you see a piece of wood that is rotting there (I leave it because it makes a nice border line and it is home to many little insects, playing their games there. )Bring your nose there and you are transported into a world of wet forest soil, remembering of agarwood, ambergris, with a touch of mushroom.
With this picture I engage into another week that will see me thinking hard about September until December 06, stocking things, streamlining things and consolidating things. Issues that I will cover later this week, once the still life has found its way into a little glass bottle on my desk…..

green greetings

Greetings to you all. I am fighting with my jungle in front of the house, with litte success. Well, I guess that is a good news for our green visitors there.
Enjoy your weekend and see you soon here again.