1863 Perfume Oil

"You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same."

~ Ninny Threadgoode ~

My latest perfume creation is one of my most complicated and intense to date. Not for the faint of heart.

 

1863 was a tremendously difficult year in the United States. Our country was in the middle of a terrible Civil War and would continue to be for two more years. It was also the year in which our President, Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed a date of national Thanksgiving in the month of November. Those two facts seem so counterintuitive side by side, and yet they are and will remain etched in our history.

Many of the photographs and ephemera that remain from that era tell brutal truths about the ways of life and death in those harsh days. There is absolutely no doubt that 1863 was ripe with hardship and strife, but somewhere in there also lies many simple truths, ordinary days and feasts with family and friends.

My mind often wanders into a land of daydreams that writes stories for people in pictures, borders on synesthetic mania and "sees" scent and/or color in memories. The faces in old photographs are more than just nameless lost souls. They lived, they loved, they laughed and cried, they probably meandered about this planet with more mundane thoughts than they did great ones. In those days, like today, many people in love were ripped apart by war, some were reunited, weddings, births, deaths and togetherness.

1863 perfume oil starts off with delicious cranberry sauce followed by smoked vanilla, deciduous woods, mystery and musk.

Oh My Darlin' & 1863 will be released for purchase on Etsy and my website this week!