Free Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel

therefore an excellent moisturizer. It comes from the seeds of a desert shrub and is a lovely golden color, with no fragrance of its own; it is also much less prone to rancidity and oxidation than other oils.
    Jojoba oil can be used as a liquid carrier. It can also be mixed with beeswax to make solid and semisolid perfumes, known as unguents. These have been around since ancient times, when they were made by steeping plant parts in animal fat, or mixing fragrant oils with fat and beeswax. In Egypt they were shaped into cones and worn on the head—dispensing fragrance, health, and spiritual purity as they melted down from the heat of the body. (In tomb paintings, the presence of these cones functions a bit like haloes in Christian art, signifying the state of being blessed.) Other peoples carried them close to the body in jeweled cases.
    And so can you. A compact of solid perfume is easy to carry in a handbag, briefcase, or backpack. The scent is a little denser than alcohol-based perfume, and the experience of spreading it on with your fingers is more earthy than spraying a cologne from a short distance. But solid perfume is also extremely discreet; it will scent only you, not the environment around you. I package mine in vintage compacts and pillboxes that I find on the Internet or in junk stores and antique shops.
    The texture of a good solid perfume is similar to that of a good lipstick, creamy and waxy and firm enough to offer some resistance
to your finger, but not so hard that it takes any real force to get some to adhere to your finger. I prefer natural yellow beeswax, which I purchase in one-pound blocks, enough to last most home perfumers for many years. It lends a sweetish fragrance and a warm amber glow to solid perfumes, and the process of grating it, melting it, and smelling the delicate honeyed scent it gives off contributes to the meditative aspects of making perfume. A bleached beeswax is also available, but I do not recommend it—the texture is thin, the bleaching gives the wax a chemical smell, and the resulting perfume is pasty in texture and appearance.
    EQUIPMENT
    The tools you will need to begin making perfume are simple and readily available, as well as easy to use. In addition to the perfume materials themselves, and the scent strips and carriers I have already mentioned, here is what you will need to get started:

    Beakers for blending. You can purchase these from any chemical supply house. Small ones that are calibrated for 15 and 30 ml are most useful.
    Wooden or plastic chopsticks for stirring. You can also use wooden or bamboo skewers cut into manageable lengths, or glass cocktail stirrers if you come across them in a thrift shop.
    Droppers for measuring essences and other ingredients. They can be bought in a drugstore or by the dozen at chemical supply houses.
    Rubbing alcohol for cleaning droppers. This is easily obtained in any drugstore.
    Measuring spoons for larger quantities of ingredients. An ordinary plastic or metal set for cooking is fine.
    Bottles for storing essences and perfume experiments, and for
packaging your finished perfumes. You can collect the latter at flea markets and thrift stores, or, for more money, in antique shops. For storing the essences and experiments, you will need an assortment of plain small bottles—from 10 ml to I ounce or so. Chemical supply houses are a good source, and I have given additional sources for both plain and decorative bottles in the appendix.
    Small adhesive labels for your bottles. I like to use circular labels, white ones for experiments and colored ones for my bottles of top notes (yellow), middle notes (orange), and base notes (green).
    Coffee filters and unbleached filter papers for straining out the solid flower waxes after a perfume has aged.

    For making solid perfumes:

    Grater for grating beeswax. The simple trapezoidal kind you use for cheese is fine. I use the medium-size holes and grate several tablespoons at a time. Store