Perfume ingredients are selected from several reputable sources worldwide apart from those that we grow ourselves. Highest quality natural oils and absolutes are used as required in all our compounds.

It is always enlightening to work with the raw ingredients in the making of traditional pots-pourris and scented powders. For certain, the bottled essence seems often unrelated to the smell of the source material whether it be of dried root or powdered spice or resin.

As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:……..

No Proustian moment for Edward Thomas in 'Old Man' (circa 1914)

The hoar green feathery herb known as Old Man or Lad’s Love and more often as Southernwood referred to in the poem has traditionally been grown as a doorside bush in order to repel insects and to drive Serpents of the Garden from the threshold – Thomas Hill, 'The Gardeners Labyrinth' (1590); the serpents, no doubt, being the toads and frogs of Elizabethan times.

In Southern Europe, young men would rub the lemon camphor scented leaves into their faces in order to promote beard growth and smell good at the same time - more of a beforeshave than an aftershave. The herb has many associations with virility and has medicinal, culinary and perfume uses. The French name for Southernwood is Garderobe and it is one of the Artemisia species that make up the Armoise family of herbs. The leaves are dried for use in sachets; then placed amongst linen and clothes to offer protection from moth damage, much in the way that the dried vetiver root and patchouli leaf have been used in India.