Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume [Paperback]

Mandy Aftel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2004

Publishers Weekly called this unique title an "extraordinary treatise on the history and making of perfume" and hails author Mandy Aftel's ability to "bring sheer delight in the bouquet of aromas in the natural world" and her "irreverent sensibility that embraces 'little-acknowledged' aphrodisiacs like the smell of sweat."

Renowned perfumer Mandy Aftel explores the primal nature and fundamental importance of aroma in everyday life, teaching people about the nature of smell and the idea of "olfactory consciousness" in Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume. With gorgeous illustrations, the book also serves as a practical guide to making custom scents for a variety of uses, and explains the process of selecting "base notes", "heart notes" and "head notes" to create truly personal aromas and perfumes.

Writer and perfumer Mandy Aftel was a founder and chief perfumer of all-natural perfume company Grandiflorum, and went on to create Aftelier, a company that concentrates exclusively on creating custom perfumes for men and women. As an authority on natural essences and custom perfumes, she has participated in panels for the perfume industry, and demonstrated and taught the art of natural perfumery across the nation. Her work has been featured in publications including In Style, Vogue, W Magazine, Self, O (Oprah) Magazine, Allure, Health and Elle.

"Smelling her extraordinary collection of oils took me to beautiful places I have never been before. The fragrance that Mandy Aftel blended exclusively for me is full of citrus and herbal fragrances that complement my culinary life." --Alice Waters, Executive Chef and Owner celebrated restaurant Chez Panisse

"Reading Mandy Aftel on perfume is like listening to Mozart on original instruments-it's a revelation of tone and technique. She captures the sensuous pleasure of working with fragrance oils and the intellectual delight of composing in scent. Her book combines a perfumer's sensibility with the authority of a historian and the passion of an enthusiast." --Avery Gilbert, President of the Sense of Smell Institute

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To this most extraordinary treatise on the history and making of perfume, Aftel, a writer and aroma designer, brings sheer delight in the bouquet of aromas in the natural world, as well as a "love for arcana" and an irreverent sensibility that embraces "little-acknowledged" aphrodisiacs like the smell of sweat. Smell is one of the most primal senses: even newborns orient first toward the smell of their mothers' milk. And world history is full of the manipulation of smell, she reveals, starting with the palace perfumers of ancient Egypt; the Israelite women who concocted essences for temple sacrifices; the Romans, who anointed nearly everything; the alchemists, who searched for the Divine Essence; all the way up to modern pheromone researchers who hope, finally, "to snare the sex drive." Aftel traces this history with witty anecdotes (Ben Franklin's plea for a drug to make sweet-smelling farts, Petrus Castellus's advice to rub civet directly on the penis) and well-chosen alchemical and botanical illustrations. After this seductive introduction, she shifts into the how-to mode, discussing the actual making of a scent, a process of selecting certain "base notes," adding "heart notes" and finally the "top chords." Her emphasis is on experimenting, and developing an "olfactory consciousness." Since organically based perfumes interact with the wearer, they must be designed for a particular user, not vice versa, as with commercial, synthetically based products. Aftel provides some sample formulas and concludes with a roundup of romantic, bathing and spiritual uses of perfumes. Agent, Peter Matson.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

This is by Mandy Aftel, who is an all-natural perfumer in Berkeley. She comes out of the same movement for the best natural ingredients that created Chez Panisse [restaurant], also in Berkeley, which started the foodie revolution. This is a wonderful, swoony, sensual book. She gives you the history of perfume through the ages, from the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians. She talks about how people have moved away from the idea of perfume as a ritualistic, meditative, aesthetic creation. The mass marketing of perfume, which includes a lot of synthetics and chemicals, has taken away a lot from the original idea of what perfume was and should be.

Aftel started her own atelier to make perfumes. She uses natural ingredients, so no synthetics, no chemicals, no fixatives. The downside is that all-natural perfumes don't last that long, maybe two hours maximum. But she has striven to show that you can make elegant, complex, interesting, beautiful perfumes using all natural ingredients. She holds workshops where you can make your own perfume. The book is really a primer to go back to the roots and the ancient ideas of what perfume is all about. She talks about the meditative nature of certain essences, and notes their healing properties and the transcendental element of perfumery. It's also gorgeously written.

People have read this book and developed their own interest in making perfume. It's a seminal, inspirational book that many people cite. Earlier I mentioned the Swiss perfumer Andy Tauer. He trained as a chemist. He told me he read Mandy's book, and after that he decided he wanted to make perfume. He started experimenting in a home laboratory, just mixing ingredients, and his first perfume was called "L'Air du Desert Marocain". It was a huge hit. Luca Turin gave it five stars and called it a masterpiece. Tauer is now a highly recognised niche perfumer. He's not a completely natural perfumer, but he uses up to 50% natural ingredients which is huge these days. There are many perfumes that use just a few percentage points of real ingredients and the rest is synthetic. That's not to say you can't make perfumes using all or mainly synthetics. There are some wonderful perfumers out there with very modern takes on perfumery - such as Comme des Garcons - and they have no problem using synthetics.

This book has inspired a generation of perfumers, and it brought people back to the original idea of what perfume was supposed to be. Mandy Aftel is a very spiritual person, who is able to meld the spiritual and ritualistic elements of perfumery with the pure, hedonistic, sensual beauty of it.

(Denise Hamilton The Browser 20111004)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith (October 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586857029
• ISBN-13: 978-1586857028
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

112 of 117 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essence & Alchemy July 22, 2001

By nancy

Format:Hardcover

This just might be the best overall book on fragrance ever, ever written. It is of essential interest to the reader interested in perfume at most any level, from the connoisseur to the designer to the fabricator to the consumer. Mandy Aftel persists in creating perfumes from "all natural" ingredients, after "the trade" now relies on synthetics and scent enhancers and linear construction, even in the most expensive concoctions. And, here we're talking about QUALITY perfumes with history behind them, not new age, "go with the glow" infusions that are often a little reminiscent of the compost heap after the rain. For the general reader, Aftel references the history of fragrance preparation, from ancient times, through alchemists perfumery, to the great age of the perfection of the art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All the traditional ingredients are itemized, from essential incenses and oils used as the "base" to the citrus and floral essences used for the "heart" or middle notes, to the delicate and short-termed finishing high or "head" notes. The properties of each are well explored. More interested readers will be delighted to learn more about the character of what is going into their favorite perfumes and what combines and what doesn't. The reader considering dabbling in perfumery, will find this to be an excellent guide on how to start and continue to build fragrances from easily obtainable essences acquired by mail order.

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars enchanting!! August 29, 2003

By Jason D. Florin

Format:Hardcover

This book relates the historical facts about perfumes in an enjoyable, easy to read manner. The author does not limit herself to the descriptions of the typical essential oils listed in most books such as lavender, rose and jasmine, but also includes more exotic aromatics such as blood orange, champa, amberette, and cabreuva. She does not include the more medicinal smelling oils like thyme and tea tree in her recomendations as many other books do. However, this is a book on perfumary and the esthetic properties of the essential oils are the focus. For those interested in the technical and medicinal merits of the essential oils, this is not the book for you. The author does not promote the use of animal products; they are mentioned as these oils are a part of the history of perfumery, and still have a role , albiet diminished, in the modern perfume industry. Her discriptions of the various oils are detailed and her anecdotal references are interesting. She describes how to blend oils, offers suggestions on blending companions, and provides enough data to create your own blends. The oils are catagorized by note, and also according to family ie. resin, citrus, floral etc.She also includes recipies, indicates which oils are costly and/or difficult to find, and some sources. Overall, this is a well written, entertaining, and information packed book, which focuses on perfumery not chemistry.A sheer joy to read, and inspiring for the creative nature of blending essential oils.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This should be a prerequiste book... December 10, 2004

By Kasee L. Kozel

Format:Hardcover

This is the book to have when you want the best perspective about natural perfumery. Most perfume books focus solely on the synthetic or aesthetic aspect of scent. "Essence and Alchemy" goes into depth about all aspects of perfume: scientifically, historically, sensually and spiritually. Maybe this will add one more element to home perfume-making. It's what makes the book unique. That, and it's a great read. I renewed it twice from the library when I first came across it!

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars An overview of perfume, but somewhat unfocused October 25, 2009

By Raine Daye

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book was an entertaining read, but it was hardly a good historical account of perfumery. It did have a brief overview at the beginning of the book, but it quickly goes into a collection of quotes and historical quirks about perfume. I think that the "alchemy" part of the book where the author repeatedly ties perfume making to the thought processes of alchemists gets old fast. While alchemical processes did play a part in perfume's beginning the parallels she draws seem to be more of her own making.

I think this book also didn't quite live up to my expectations of a book to help a beginner start making their own perfume. It did list items a beginner needs and go into a discussion of the different notes and the ratios they need to be in, and it also described the characteristics of a sampling of fragrances as well. However, a majority of these passages seemed to drift into (and worse yet start out as) lengthy paragraphs on the "spiritual" aspects of perfume, while others simply dwell on the intangible and almost go as far to qualify as "purple prose".
The author also has a preference of natural scents over synthetics which I don't have a problem with especially since she explained why, but she does mention that synthetics can cheaply extend natural scents for perfumers on a budget but at no time during the book does she discuss the use of synthetics for scents that cannot be naturally derived such as with the "ozone" smells.

This book did have a few recipes for scents (only about four I think), and it did have a list of beginning supplies as well some website retailers of these items, but no where did it go into a lot of detail as to why someone would want to do this on their own (given the large starting cost) outside of creating personalized scents.... I think I would have liked the book better if there was more information or at least if the information contained was more easily accessible. As is, the useful parts of the book are often hidden between the author's comparison of perfumery to alchemy and while I may find the imagery of combining the sun and moon interesting it isn't incredibly relevant to what people who want to start making perfume need to know. Read more ›