Penning Perfumes, Birmingham

I wrote previously about the Penning Perfumes project but now the moment of revelation is fast approaching!

The fragrance I created in response to a poem will be officially released for the first time at the Penning Perfumes event on the evening of Wednesday 6th February 2013 at Le Truc in Birmingham's Ladywell Walk.

I will be there, so will the poet Claire Trévien and we'll be talking about the experience - Claire will be experiencing the fragrance designed from her poem for the first time and giving her reactions live (gulp!) and I'll be talking about how I got from one to the other.  Everyone will get to smell the new creation and if it turns out you love it I'll even have a few bottles for sale.  If you don't already have one you can buy tickets now for this and future events.  Speaking of future events I see that my friend and mentor John Stephen will be creating a perfume live on stage on 21st Feb in Oxford - brave man!

I'm looking forward to a fascinating evening in Birmingham.  Ahead of the event I was asked some questions about the experience - these appear on the Penning Perfumes tumblr page, but I'm also repeating them below.

It looks as if I'm working on something in this picture - but what?

1. As a perfumer, is poetry something you’ve used to stimulate new fragrance ideas before?

There have been a lot of different sources of inspiration and different kinds of brief, but this is the first time I’ve had a poem to work from. More usual for me would be a cocktail, plant or individual scent note, sometimes just a name. Or there could be a more prosaic, conventional kind of perfume brief. This has been a great experience and has made me look back at the poetry I wrote in my youth (I don’t write much any more) to see if there might be a fragrance hiding in there somewhere …

2. What has been your experience of turning a poem into a scent for Penning Perfumes - anything you weren’t expecting, or that was easier/more difficult than you expected?

I suppose the thing that was most unexpected was how easy it was - I don’t mean to say that the perfume came together first go - no such luck! But I expected to struggle to find a match between poetic phrases and imagery and scent notes, but in fact I found they came together very quickly and within an hour or so of first reading the poem I knew roughly the direction I wanted to take the fragrance. I did cheat a bit by exchanging emails with the poet though and that caused a couple of course corrections and added dimensions to the work that I’d not seen before. One of the things that fascinated me was that the poem was itself inspired by a performance of music - so three forms of artistic expression are layered in my perfume only one of which is mine.

3. Which is the one commercially available perfume that you’d love to see turned into a poem and why?

I’d love to see Terre d’Hermes turned into a poem partly because it’s one of my favourite scents and designed by a perfumer I admire very much but also because it’s such an abstract, minimalist creation I’d love to see how it might manifest in verse.

Penning Perfumes

Today I've been working on my contribution to the latest Penning Perfumes project: a splendid idea pioneered by Odette Toilette and Claire Trévien to combine two art forms.  Poets are given perfumes from which to take inspiration and Perfumers are given poems.

The poem I'm responding to is by Claire Trévien herself and I've spent some time today in correspondence with her to better understand the work I'm responding to.  It's called Listening to Charles Ives, which is enough to tell you that the poem takes some of it's inspiration from music - so my perfume will be a third generation derivation of art in a third different medium: I hope I can live up to the earlier works!

Pop-up Shop

Update: The Pop-up Shop in Newport - opposite the Shakespeare Pub - now features over 30 local businesses & I'm there myself every Wednesday afternoon if you want to talk perfume.

I'm very pleased to report that Pell Wall Perfumes products are available at the new pop-up-shop in Newport, Shropshire (details on the 2nd of those links).

The shop is open 9-5 Monday to Saturday with late opening for the Newport Christmas Lights Fayre on Friday 30th November.  Just in time for all those Christmas gifts you've not started thinking about yet!

Besides perfumes there are several types of handmade jewellery, silk cards, hats, furniture, wood-turning, art, candles, pictures and more.

And while you're browsing you can enjoy a hot drink and check out the community notices too: it's a genuine local community project I'm proud to be associated with.

IFRA UK Fragrance Forum

This year, for the second time ever, IFRA UK (formerly known as the British Fragrance Association) is hosting a Fragrance Forum at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, London on Thursday 18th October 2012.  I'm proud to say that Pell Wall Perfumes will be one of the sponsors of the event.

The theme for the event is 'From Flower to Shower' and it promises to be fascinating - here are some details from the IFRA press release:

The occasion will provide an opportunity to meet those from the fragrance industry including perfumers, scientists, customers and academics as well as senior personnel from other trade associations

Lisa Hipgrave, director of IFRA United Kingdom, said: “The 2012 IFRA UK Fragrance Forum is entitled ‘From Flower to Shower’ as we intend to explore the entire creative process of fragrance creation. 

“We held the first event of its kind last year and it was so over-subscribed that we decided to expand the capacity of the 2012 Fragrance Forum enabling more non-Members to obtain tickets. We now plan to stage this Fragrance Forum annually. The occasion offers not only a fascinating set of presentations but also a unique networking opportunity for delegates and speakers. It will bring together those involved in every aspect of fragrance research, creation and application”. 

And here is some more information from the Perfumer & Flavorist magazine:

Jenny Tillotson, a senior research fellow at the University of Arts London (Central Saint Martin’s) and the University of Cambridge, is scheduled to talk about her vision of: "From Flower To Shower To Empower: the Fragrant Future," which includes information about wearable technology, pioneered by a technique she calls, "Scentsory Design." 

Will Andrews, who works as a fragrance scientist within the fragrance design team at P&G’s Innovation Center, is scheduled to discuss, “Communicating scent through ‘Holistic Design,’” including successfully communicating a fragrance by connecting the story inside and outside the bottle.

Robin Clery of Givaudan plans to speak about a technique known as ‘headspace analysis’ in which allows one to capture the most elusive scents from nature and make them available for perfumery.

“Smell is a potent wizard” is the message of Tim Jacob, a professor at he School of Biosciences at Cardiff University. He will detail how scent is a response that includes emotions, memory and the endocrine system.

In addition the IFRA UK Fragrance Forum will feature an anthology of poems inspired by fragrance, called Penning Perfumes, which was organized by Odette Toilette of Scratch + Sniff and poet Claire Trévien.

You can get further details by downloading the IFRA UK Summer Newsletter or this summary from the University of Arts, London.

Blackberry Fair, Whitchurch, Saturday 6th October

This Saturday, 6th October Pell Wall Perfumes will be at the Blackberry Fair in Whitchurch.  It's a fun, family, community-based event centred around the Civic Centre and Market Hall and spilling over into the High Street, which will be closed to traffic for the occasion.

If you are anywhere nearby - and Whitchurch is easy to find from Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Chester and Wrexham as well as from the south along the A41 to Telford - do come along for a great family day out.

Pell Wall Perfumes will be in the Market Hall not far from the stage and the circus . . .

This is me at our stand at the Shrewsbury Flower Show 

The Shrewsbury Flower Show

On Friday and Saturday 10th and 11th August 2012 the oldest horticultural show in the world will be celebrating it's 125th anniversary and Pell Wall Perfumes will be there too.

Pell Wall Perfumes will be on Stand A26 in the Home and Craft Marquee

The Shrewsbury Flower Show, organised by the Shropshire Horticultural Society, is held each year in the Quarry Park in Shrewsbury - 29 acres including the Dingle - a sunken garden designed by Britain's first celebrity gardener Percy Thrower.

The Dingle in the centre of Quarry Park

It promises to be a wonderful day out and, fingers crossed, it even looks as though the weather will be good.

Pell Wall Perfumes will have some special offers and several new and exclusive products that you can't buy from the website, so if you're anywhere within reach do come along to see us in the main Home and Craft marquee stand A26.

{1953} a new luxury fragrance from Pell Wall

Here's some of the stock, in cold storage, ready to go to the show:

Perfume Stock

Another of the fun products being displayed for the first time:

Frogspawn & Pondweed Bubble Bath

A Jubilee Pageant, 1953 and the Coronation

On July 12th 2012 Her Majesty the Queen will be attending a Pageant in Shropshire in honour of her 60 years as Queen.  Pell Wall Perfumes will be there too and it seemed the perfect occasion to release a fragrance I've had in development for a while.

1953 - a limited edition fragrance by Pell Wall Perfumes

I'm calling it '1953' - after the year of the coronation - that's because among many special things involved in the ascension to the throne of a British monarch perhaps the most special is the anointing - according to Wikipedia British Monarchs are the only ones still anointed as part of the ceremony and it is done with a specially made Coronation Oil - the ingredients for which have been similar since the 12th Century and include ambergris, civet, rose, jasmine, orange flower, cinnamon, musk and benzoin.

1953 by Pell Wall Perfumes includes all those fine ingredients (though for ethical reasons I'm using synthetic substitutes for civet and musk) in the very best qualities to be found.   I've then adapted them into a very long-lasting, easy to wear and highly concentrated Parfum for the 21st Century, presented in a diamond-clear heart-shaped flask, complete with it's own crystal stand.

Newly filled bottles awaiting boxing

Just twelve of these magnificent gifts will be made for sale on the day of release, with further small releases planned including Christmas 2012, the anniversary of the coronation itself on 2nd June 2013 and finally for Christmas 2013 - after that 1953 will be available only to special order.

Fordhall Farm Summer Fair

Pell Wall Perfumes will be at Fordhall Farm for their Summer Fair on Sunday 24th June. We’ll have some special deals for visitors to our stand and the whole day promises to be a great family day out too.

There will be tractor and donkey rides, sack racing, face painting, wildlife activities, pizza making, clay sculpting, hawks on walks and Simon Airy displaying an array of reptiles and amphibians.

Picture from last year’s summer fair at Fordhall Farm

Fordhall Farm itself is something rather special - it’s England’s first Community Land Initiative, one of the longest running organic farms in the country and incorporates a scheduled Ancient Monument on the premises.  The Wikipedia article gives some information about it’s history.

PWP at Market Drayton Farmer’s Market

Pell Wall Perfumes will have a stall at the quarterly Farmer’s Market in my local town of Market Drayton again on Sunday.  Do come along and visit - quote this blog entry and get a 10% discount - and a free smile!

The picture below is from the pre-Christmas market - it was incredibly windy that day - hopefully it will be much warmer and generally more pleasant on Sunday.