{"id":105,"date":"2012-02-28T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T16:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/28\/violets-on-mothers-day\/"},"modified":"2012-02-28T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-28T16:29:00","slug":"violets-on-mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/28\/violets-on-mothers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Violets on Mother\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the third in my series of articles for the Shropshire Magazine on matters perfume, this time featuring an exploration of some of the traditions of Mothering Sunday and the special place of violets in perfumery.<\/p>\n

You can see a pdf scan of the article as it appeared in the magazine, under the title Heaven Scent for Mum<\/i><\/b><\/a> or a plain pdf file of the unedited article<\/a>, which is what appears here.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/a>Article: A Posy of Violets on Mother\u2019s Day<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\nMother\u2019s Day or Mothering Sunday has been celebrated here in Britain for a very long time.  The tradition of children giving little posies of spring flowers \u2013 especially violets \u2013 to their mothers in church on this day isn\u2019t so much observed now, but giving cards and gifts is still very popular.<\/p>\n
\nThe terms Mother\u2019s Day and Mothering Sunday are used more-or-less interchangeably, but historically they are different events.  The modern Mother\u2019s Day was \u2018invented\u2019 in the United States by Julia Ward Howe who wrote The Mother\u2019s Day Proclamation in 1870 and Ann Jarvis and her daughter Anna who, in the early years of the 20th Century first founded work-groups and later started a campaign for an official US holiday.  President Woodrow Wilson signed that into US law in 1914, establishing the holiday and fixing the date as the 2nd Sunday in May.  Many other countries, often replacing or incorporating existing traditions, have taken up this form and date since.<\/div>\n
\nMothering <\/span>Sunday <\/span>was <\/span>an <\/span>older,<\/span><\/div>\n
\nChurch tradition while Mother\u2019s Day<\/div>\n
\nis a 20<\/span>th<\/span><\/div>\n
\nCentury secular holiday<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nHere in Britain, the much older tradition of Mothering Sunday retains its status as a movable feast, celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent.  Thought to go back to the 16th Century practice of returning to one\u2019s mother church \u2013 usually the nearest Cathedral \u2013 on this day, dispersed families were thus enabled to be united.  This in turn is thought to derive from an earlier Roman festival honouring the mother goddess Cybele which was held in mid-March.  In the Church of England, during the Mothering Sunday service in many churches it became usual for children to give small posies of flowers to their mothers and violets in particular often featured in these: the practice was common in the 50s and still happens in some churches today.<\/div>\n
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\nViolets<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nViolets \u2013 the scented kind from Viola odorata<\/i> \u2013 have a special place in perfumery.  The scent of violet flowers is sometimes described as \u2018flirty\u2019 because it seems to come and go \u2013 a feature of the ionones from which the scent is mainly composed.  It has been valued in perfumery for at least 400 years but the scent has always been difficult to capture.  Around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century \u2013 just about when Mother\u2019s Day was being established in the United States \u2013 violet perfumes were all the rage.  At this time something very special was available \u2013 violet flower absolute \u2013 made by solvent extraction from violet flowers and distilled down to the essential principle of the scent of violet<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nEven then it was very rare, very expensive and exclusively used in the very best perfumes. We think that the last time violet flower absolute was extracted was around 1902: after that the increasing cost of labour and approaching war made it uneconomic.  Estimates of what it would cost to produce today vary from $10,000 to $500,000 a kilo \u2013 not even the biggest perfume houses can afford that.  Today when you smell violet in a perfume it will be made with a clever combination of synthetic ionones and other chemicals present in the natural scent, recreated and combined by skilled perfumers at a fraction of the cost of extraction.  Perhaps surprisingly, that is true of many flower scents.<\/div>\n
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\nOddly enough though, the little violet has the last word: even today perfumers the world over use one of a tiny number of natural green notes: violet leaf absolute with just a touch of the violet flower hidden within it, it is a lovely material.  You\u2019ll see this romantically described in the scent notes of a perfume as crushed violet leaves \u2013 so next time you see that in a description, you\u2019ll know what it means.<\/p>\n
\nLook out for crushed violet leaves<\/div>\n
\nin perfume marketing<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nFlower Essences<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nA posy of violets isn\u2019t something you\u2019ll see in many florists any longer and you certainly shouldn\u2019t pick wild ones, but you could give the perfume equivalent of the posy of spring flowers as a gift this Mother\u2019s Day. If you want real, natural essences they are few: the only spring flower still routinely extracted is narcissus \u2013 a fabulously beautiful, complex material made from Narcissus poeticus<\/i> \u2013 unfortunately it has two disadvantages, first that it has a fabulous price to match it\u2019s beauty and second that, however lovely, it does not smell at all like putting your nose to a narcissus flower: a challenge to the perfumer.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nOne option is a posy of mixed flowers \u2013 in my own range I have Jacinth \u2013 a sparkling mix of roses, orange flower, ylang and lily and that precious narcissus absolute is in it too.<\/div>\n
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\nAlternatively I\u2019m releasing a Spring Flower Collection of light transparent and cheerfully springlike fragrances in which you will find notes of violets, narcissus, and hyacinth plus of course, crushed violet leaves . . .<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nChris Bartlett is the owner of Pell Wall Perfumes; a Shropshire based perfumery producing exclusive fragrances for men, for women, for the home and specialising in making unique bespoke fragrances. For more, see the website: www.pellwall-perfumes.com. <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the third in my series of articles for the Shropshire Magazine on matters perfume, this time featuring an exploration of some of the traditions of Mothering Sunday and the special place of violets in perfumery. You can see a pdf scan of the article as it appeared in the magazine, under the title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53,7,13,78,55,56],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}