Category: ingredient

  • A WondAroma Podcast

    A WondAroma Podcast

    Happy New Year! Episode 10 of the WondAroma podcast features the Pell Wall perfumer Chris Bartlett talking to Christine Daley of Perfumer Supply House about: how Pell Wall came about the process of composing a fragrance and  a handful of interesting ingredients including Geosmin, Green Tea Givco, Skatole, Theaspirane and Zenolide. The audio quality starts […]

  • Vanilla: the universal ingredient

    Vanilla: the universal ingredient

    Prosecco upgraded with Vanilla CognacPell Wall style Vanilla is one of the most useful ingredients in cooking, cocktails and perfumery.  Its story is quite well known, so I’m only going to touch on some of the less well-known aspects here.  My main purpose is to give details of a fine drink and a tincture that […]

  • Tolu Balsam

    Tolu Balsam

    Tolu Balsam is a very useful natural fixative as well as a lovely base-note in its own right, but it isn’t the easiest of materials to handle.  It comes from the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum.   It is used to fix materials such as juniper, petitgrain, spices and florals of many kinds and frequently forms a […]

  • Special Offer Ingredients

    Special Offer Ingredients

    Clearance Bargain Ingredients – only one of each! From time to time people order perfumery ingredients from me and, either because they say they are in a hurry or just because I’m trying to keep ahead of things, I make up the order before they pay . . . then sometimes they don’t pay, either […]

  • Perfumery Ingredients at Pell Wall

    Perfumery Ingredients at Pell Wall

    The March issue of my Ingredients List is now online and the list now features some 300 materials, both natural and synthetic, with some very exciting new additions and a spectacular price reduction on one material thanks to some help from a friend in the US. There are two versions of the list on the […]

  • The Quinolines

    The Quinolines

    I thought it might be useful to do another in my occasional series of disambiguation posts about perfumery ingredients with easily confused names or equivalences.  This time I’m looking at a group of similar ingredients used to create an earthy, leather note in fragrances: No quinolines in Sticky Leather Sky Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 65442-31-1), of which […]

  • How To Make Perfume

    The spread at the beginning of the article as it appeared in print on 3rd August 2014 If you want to make perfume yourself and are looking for help to get you started, this is the place. Here are links to methods, sources of ingredients, recommended equipment and advice: everything I wished I could find […]

  • Sandalwood found to have wound healing effects

    The implications of a fascinating piece of new research could be widespread:  Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany have found that not only are there olfactory receptors in the top layer of human skin, but have shown that a particular sandalwood odourant can trigger those receptors resulting in increased growth and migration in the surrounding cells. […]

  • Lily of the Valley – mystery, manufacture & murder

    Mystery Perfumery has always glorified the floral and for centuries perfumers have sought ways to extract the essence from real flowers to incorporate into their creations. With many flowers this quest has met with considerable success, with a few commercially viable products produced that are still used in modern perfumery: rose and jasmine being the […]

  • Natural Perfume Materials: what the terms mean

    There are quite a few methods by which the aromatic principles of natural materials are made available for use in perfumery and unfortunately some of the terms used are obscure and others are sometimes mis-used. The purpose of this post is to set out the main terms used, together with definitions of widespread acceptance.  In […]