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!

Oh My Darlin' Perfume Oil

I've always had a soft spot for poor Clementine. Like me, she had giant feet and so her demise in the water due to a sliver in her unnaturally large foot has always haunted me. The silly old folk ballad is one that I frequently find repeating in my head for no reason and if you know the melody you know the viral nature of it.

 

I tend to really think about words and lyrics and because of that I have always had a mental picture of Clementine that is probably greatly different than intended by Percy Montrose (if indeed he was the writer of this parodic melody). The Clementine of my mind has always been beautiful with long wavy copper tresses. She was a woman in a mining camp of 1849 that would've been a little dusty, a little wild, but nevertheless a lady - and dare I say a sexy one at that.

 

Oh My Darlin' perfume oil has been a long time process and was finally created during a week when I could not budge the song from my mind.

 

Sweet clementines (what else?) and steamy griddle cakes with notes of fresh cut wood entwined with a base of velvety vanilla and sandalwood with just a touch of smoke. Sensual, rich and complex.

I'll post pictures of the finished product sometime this week or next. In the meantime, the label design is up there.

 

www.johnagibsonbowman.com

www.hootsgallery.etsy.com