12 Comments
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Samuel D.'s avatar

Tremendous work, thanks Jamal !

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Simon O'Connor's avatar

Wonderful, thanks Jamal!

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Daniel Perera's avatar

This is excellent. Saved 📌

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Antonietta Meneghetti's avatar

Oh wow! This is a perfect post, thank you, Jamal!

I’m certain many like me are curious as to how to get started and what is required to dabble with creating scents.

Brilliantly informative as always

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Lumi Ruby's avatar

Great list - thanks for posting this! It would be helpful to include your preferred sources for where to acquire… From personal experience, some materials are getting harder to find. In the US I have used theperfumersapprentice site with good results so far.

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Jamal's avatar

I was pondering that but didn't want it to seem like an ad for online shops. Nevertheless, these are such common, fundamental materials that almost everyone stocks all of them, including PA in the US and Harrison Sherwood in the UK.

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Lumi Ruby's avatar

Good point and I thought of that too 🙂… I collect materials for nose training so quality and accuracy are paramount. Enfleurage in NY is a great source for oils and the only place I know of to get real gardenia extract (can’t be obtained through regular distillation processes). I would like to get my hands on a sliver of real ambergris someday.

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Jamal's avatar

The guys at Enfleurage NYC are very friendly and genuine but I would be wary about some products. Their marjoram oil let me down, but for sure they have some great products, you just need to sample before buying the amount you need.

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Lumi Ruby's avatar

Have you used apothecary’s garden?

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Jamal's avatar

Nope

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Cuir de Rube's avatar

Great list. As an extremely amateur perfumer, I really appreciate this. Thanks so much.

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Collette Peek's avatar

Thank you so much for this extensive list and for grouping the materials, Jamal! For a beginner it is a challenging list, but I'll put on a brave face :). I guess step 2 is to smell them all and take notes. Do you have any suggestions on how to make the learning process as effective as possible? What else do we need in our perfume lab?

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