Perfume
ingredients are selected from several reputable sources worldwide
apart from those that we grow ourselves. Highest quality natural
oils and absolutes are used as required in all our compounds.
It is always
enlightening to work with the raw ingredients in the making
of traditional pots-pourris and scented powders. For certain,
the bottled essence seems often unrelated to the smell of
the source material whether it be of dried root or powdered
spice or resin.
As for
myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:……..
No Proustian moment for Edward Thomas in 'Old Man' (circa
1914)
The hoar
green feathery herb known as Old Man or Lad’s Love and
more often as Southernwood referred to in the poem has traditionally
been grown as a doorside bush in order to repel insects and
to drive Serpents of the Garden from the threshold –
Thomas Hill, 'The Gardeners Labyrinth' (1590);
the serpents, no doubt, being the toads and frogs of Elizabethan
times.
In Southern
Europe, young men would rub the lemon camphor scented leaves
into their faces in order to promote beard growth and smell
good at the same time - more of a beforeshave than an aftershave.
The herb has many associations with virility and has medicinal,
culinary and perfume uses. The French name for Southernwood
is Garderobe and it is one of the Artemisia species that make
up the Armoise family of herbs. The leaves are dried for use
in sachets; then placed amongst linen and clothes to offer
protection from moth damage, much in the way that the dried
vetiver root and patchouli leaf have been used in India.
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