Mandrake Apothecary ~ The Seventh Sign

Interview by Justine Crane for LPR

 
Justine: Hi Sara.  It's so good to finally have a chance to talk with you about your art. We’ve (LPR) been putting it off for so long, it seemed like it might never happen, but here we are ~

First, tell the LPR readers a little about yourself; your background, and what brought you to perfumery ~

Sara: I have an eclectic background in terms of interests and courses of study, and regardless of the tangential road I wander along, or the rabbit hole I trip into as I go, it always returns to the plant world and to aromatics in some fashion.  It wasn't until I got very seriously into blending aromatics and dabbling in alchemy as a means of transformation that things literally clicked into place.  It was a matter of many roads leading back to the same place: my workbench and culturing tubes full of aging blends, leading up to that.

I don't have a fantastically complicated lineage in that 'Sara studied with ___ who studied with ___ who was apprenticed to ___' sort of way, which strikes me as kind of contrived.  And it is not that I'm some nose-governed genius either, so much as I tend to be a Jill of many trades and mistress of a few of them.  On a good day.

However, I was always nose-governed.  A couple of my earliest scent memories are of the star jasmines my uncle grew in Palo Alto, where I'd visit with cousins every summer, and of the lack of overt smell but fleshy green plantness of my great grandmother's fuschias in her backyard in Berkeley.  I just smell either of those and am there.  We always grew aromatic plants and flowers when I was a kid, even though we lived in an apartment.  I remember the sweetly spicy, and dirty odor of baby carrots, from the summer my mom handed me a terracotta pot of soil and a packet of seeds, telling me to press a bunch into the soil.  I also remember the distinctive smell of tomato leaves and stems sinking into my hands, from being sent out to the side yard to harvest tomatoes from the planter boxes.

I studied anthropology, which was not about perfume (if only I'd found and read Lise Manniche back then), but proved to be inspirational in nudging me to study herbalism more closely, and to spend more time outside in wild places.

Justine: So, what is the strangest perfumery ingredient you've ever used? ~

Sara: Skunk essence.  Antique, no less.  I was producing what wound up being a revenge blend of sorts.  I wasn't even heading in the direction of anger and unsublimated irritation, but skunk helped me exorcise some demons.

It doesn't smell bad, btw.  Reminds me of acrid leathery coffee, mixed with cigar smoke, almost.  But I like earthy smells.  If you age skunk oil, it picks up a very smooth patina, where all the angular cracks and jagged edges of the source material have been smoothed over and burnished to a shine, in some spots.

Justine: What scent, or combination of scents, slams you in the solar plexis? Y'know, the smells that really touch you. ~

Sara: I must admit to being a temple prostitute for the aromatic wonder that is Patchouli, with a capital 'P'.  Patchouli is so many things in so many different applications.  It is darkness, the forest floor and damp soil.  It is a universal blender and base ingredient.  It can be grassy, golden and syrupy, fruity, musky.  Patchouli is one of those essences I like to buy in lots and age.

Wanna hear something funny peculiar?  I don't put patchouli in every thing I possibly can.  Sometimes less is more.

Justine: You're an urban gardener , do you think working with plants and soil has helped you with your perfuming skills? ~

Sara: Definitely.  Being an urban farmer has really brought plants back to their most basic elements, to my nose and blending instincts.  In the past year I've tinctured oxalis blooms, rose petals, five different lavender species, rosemary flowers, pomegranate blossoms, and common weed flowers.

It's also given me an excuse to germinate and grow exotics you don't see in many gardens, such as Abelmoschus moschatus.  My prized seedlings are a trio of mandrakes I grew from seed, go figure.  I've been fascinated with Mandragora for years and it was time to get my hands dirty and learn from growing them; though they've nothing to do with perfumery.

I've also learned a new appreciation for more mundane aromas such as wheat straw, petrichor, finished compost, and even coop litter from the chickens.  You get to know a lot about your animals based on smell, and chickens have their own distinctive and not at all objectionable odor when you treat them well and keep their living quarters clean.  It almost reminds me of the warm furry smell of the top of my youngest cat's head when he burrows into my neck.

Justine: Are there any fragrances or perfumes out there that you wish you'd created? ~

Sara: Back in 'the day' (circa 1986), I had a thing for Lauren, by Ralph Lauren.  Tea roses and Sicilian lemons, and ambrette.  It had a start, a middle, and a powdery finish, like a well-crafted perfume that evolves.

I also have a soft spot for Byblos eau de parfum, which is no longer manufactured, but was based around fruity marigold heart notes, black pepper, and I seem to remember boronia, too.

Justine: I know your perfumery is on hiatus at the moment. Any indication as to when you'll be dusting off the shelves and opening the shutters for customers? ~

Sara: I was really really hoping to be back after my birthday in June.  It may have to be July, though.  This may sound a bit woowoo, and those who read my blog will recognize that, but things have been happening in 7s for me, and I might have to keep up that theme just to see if there's value in that exercise.  Seventh month?  (Cue up the theme music from the Twilight Zone.)

Watch for the reopening of Mandrake Apothecary (www.mandrakeapothecary.com) coming the 7^th month.

Skunked ~ Mandrake Apothecary's Sara Phillips

by Sara Phillips

"You'll never believe what I found. I can't believe someone was selling it..."

"What?" asked Lisa.

"Antique skunk oil. Can you believe this was used in perfumery at some point?"

And so I went arse over stripey tail into a very peculiar aromatic. It was a slightly anxious week waiting for the parcel in the mail. Would my cats freak out? Would my apartment smell like the acrid fatty smell of human sweat mixed with burnt coffee and the acid of rotting lemons?

Fresh skunk juice is one of those olfactory sensations that coshes one in the nose, hard. It is pervasive, pungent, piquant. Sharp. Be that as it may, it's not a smell that makes me run for cover, because it has those familiar tones of the burnt coffee and sweat, and because I have a bit of soft spot for skunks.

Antique skunk oil is in an odd class all its own. The Opening Ceremony was approached with trepidation, and a sense of expecting the worst. We did this in Lisa's kitchen, if memory serves; it was part of a lineup of other procured bottles of antique liquids, and was probably the last one opened that evening. I remember carefully carving out bits of fossilized cork with a trussing needle. Taking care to wiggle the cork free, but well away from our faces. I think we were worried it would be a stink bomb, frankly. But amazingly it wasn't. It smelled like acrid sweat, flat coffee, mud, and some other mysterious bitter things mixed into all that, sure. But it was smooth, very mellowed, and not obnoxious. It is not a smell I would rank among even a Top 100 Must Haves (frankly, the animalic essences do not do it for me), but it is history, and therefore interesting and worthy of further study.

Part of what makes this type of a smell interesting lies in its impact upon the limbic system, and I must admit this is something I gave short shrift until I got the bright idea to wave the cork in front of my cats and gauge their responses. Lucy the younger one was fascinated. Her nose twitched, and then wrinkled as she opened her mouth to get a better whiff and taste of the air around the cork. "Oooooh, this came from a furry beast! But which one?" She would have tried to cram her head into the neck of the bottle, had I held that before her. However, Daisy the elder was not interested or pleased. Her pupils got as big as kibble dishes and she bolted under the bed, not coming out for a few hours. It is probably safe to say she was skunked or had a poor encounter with one when she lived outdoors.

So, have you made 'skunk perfume'? you may well be wondering. Not as yet. I do have a tincture of this amongst the rest of my extractions and tinctures, and I did work on a blend that used its bitterness in the base, awhile back, which was actually quite good but got shelved for various reasons so I could work on other formulations. The oil itself was decanted into another bottle, and the original bottle is a museum piece in my collection. For being an animalic essence it is strangely devoid of uric and/or fecal tones, just as fresh skunk juice is devoid of those. Instead there is a dark rubbery presence in it that I've smelled only in certain roasted coffees, and in really young nutmeg distillations (as in the distillation has not aged at all, not that the nutmegs were immature when steam distilled). Rubber tires that have been baking in the sun, which have picked up a bit of prehistoric petroleum character from the tar in the asphalt. I've smelled castoreum that was 'rubbery' as well, in addition to the salty sweaty fecal tones.Antique skunk essence also proves the point that plant essences can smell more animalic than even animalic essences. Costus and cumin (highly diluted cumin) smell much more like they came from something with hair and sweat glands, than aged skunk does. I could see using this in a leather accord, but am unsure how I would go about making that happen. Perhaps with a bit of patchouli for dusty musty earth to dilute the rubber, vetiver to cut the acrid fat and add more sweat, and then some ylang III to sweeten the lot. At least, that is the plan next time I go near this essence at my workbench.