Every limited edition perfume I have blended at the bench, numbered in the order it was made. Artisan perfume in the literal sense: tiny batches blended by hand in the Southern Highlands, where I can chase something bolder and stranger than the main range could ever justify. This is the working record of what went in, and why.
Artisan is a word anyone can print on a box, so here is what it means on this page. Every limited edition starts as a formula I write, weighed by hand on one bench, in a run small enough to count. I get to chase an idea purely because it smells good to me, which is a freedom a big brand never has. If it is on this page, I made it.
The main range is the Register: the scents I have settled on, produced in larger batches so they are always on the shelf, in eau de parfum, alcohol-free spray and roll-on oil. A limited edition is the other half of the job, and the more fun half. Artisanal perfumery is a small world in Australia, and this page is the part of it that happens on my bench.
Usually one material I want to build around. Sometimes a place, a season or a scent someone asked me for and could not find.
Written out as a proper formula and weighed on the bench in perfumer-grade materials. Every version is recorded, so a good one can be made again exactly as it was.
A blend spends weeks in the dark to settle and marry before it shows you what it really is. The ones that come out singing get a number.
A few bottles go to the stall with a number and a name. Some of these I come back to and remaster. Others are made once and never again.
Bought one at the stall and want to know what was in it? Find your number. Every edition is listed with the note pyramid straight off its formula sheet, so you can see exactly what you are wearing.
I wanted the amber to be the floor of the whole thing rather than a warm note tacked on at the end, so this one is built up from ambergris instead of down onto it. Bergamot and lavender keep the opening bright and green, then it settles into tonka bean, hay and labdanum resin. Warm and clean at the same time, which is a harder trick than it sounds.
#no-007A dark name over a juice that stays bright, which is the trick I enjoy most. It opens on pink grapefruit and bitter orange, and the smoke comes up underneath it: vetiver, dark patchouli and labdanum, cushioned by a wide musk bed rather than by sugar. This is the one that sold out first, and the one people came back for.
#no-006Raspberry that leans tart rather than jammy, closer to the bush than the jar. Sea salt air runs through the middle to keep it from turning into dessert, and it lands soft on vanilla cream and sandalwood. This was the first of the numbered bench drops.
#no-005A second pass at No. 004 with the fruit pushed right to the front. Blackcurrant is one of the great difficult notes, sharp and green and very easy to overdo, so here it is held up by ripe nectarine underneath and grounded in orris, the powdery violet root that gives good fruit perfumes their velvet.
#no-004-1Built around pear, which is a note I find very hard to leave alone. Cassis bud and crushed green leaf give it the sharp edge you get off real fruit, elderflower keeps the middle airy, and a soft musk base carries the whole thing and gives it the weight of a perfume.
#no-004One formula, one run, counted to the bottle. Once it is gone, it is gone.
People ask whether these are natural perfumes, and it is a great question to ask any maker. The happy answer is that I build with both. Natural materials where they are the most beautiful thing for the job, and aroma molecules where they are. That is how the fragrances you already love are made, and it is what lets these go places a plant-only formula cannot.
The aromatics I work with are made for exactly this job. They are built to sit comfortably on skin, to behave the same way in every batch, and to stay put far longer than a raw plant extract manages. An essential oil is a wonderful thing, but a plant does not make it with your skin in mind, and many of the loveliest ones are gone long before you would like them to be.
Which is exactly why the naturals still earn their place. They bring a depth and a roundness that is hard to build any other way. And some of the best notes in perfumery simply do not grow at all. There is no sea breeze to distil and no fresh fig leaf you can press, so those get built.
Here is the part I most enjoy telling people. Those materials come from the aromatic houses that supply the world's fine fragrance. They are the companies that isolate and create the molecules the whole industry is built on, with generations of research and serious safety science behind every one. The bottle on a department store counter and the bottle on my bench are drawing from the same well. So if something here smells like it belongs beside a fragrance you already own, that is no accident. It is the same calibre of material, chosen by hand on one bench rather than by committee.
Everything arrives with its paperwork: what it is, where it came from, and the maximum amount of it that belongs on skin. Those limits are not mine to set. They come from the international safety standard the fragrance industry works to, it is a strict one, and I formulate inside it every single time.
That last part matters most to the people who came here looking for natural. Some of the tightest restrictions in all of perfumery sit on natural materials rather than synthetic ones, because plants make some very powerful chemistry. Working to the standard is what lets me use the beautiful ones properly, at a level that is a pleasure to wear.
A perfume made in small quantities by the person who wrote the formula, rather than produced to a brief at scale. On this page it means one bench in Moss Vale, one set of scales, and a run small enough to count.
Both, and on purpose. Naturals bring depth and character, and aroma molecules bring notes no plant can give you plus staying power a raw plant oil cannot match. It is how the fragrances you already wear are built. And natural does not automatically mean gentle: some of the strictest limits in perfumery sit on natural materials.
An essential oil is pressed or distilled straight from a plant. A fragrance oil is a blend a perfumer builds, which can include essential oils alongside aroma molecules. Nearly every perfume you have ever worn is the second kind, because it is the only way to reach most of the notes people fall in love with.
A tiny batch with a number of its own, made in a quantity you could count. Some ideas I come back to and remaster. Others are made once and never again.
Same bench, same materials, same maker. The difference is freedom. The Register has to please a lot of people, so a tiny batch is where I can be bolder.
At the stall, yes, whatever is on the bench that week. If you already know the main range, tell me your favourite and I will point you to the number that sits closest to it.
Sometimes, and sometimes never. A few of these I keep coming back to and remaster. Others were a moment, and they are not coming round again. Ask me about your number and I will tell you which.
Blended, bottled and labelled at the Stuga studio in Moss Vale, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Made here, not just designed here.
A run this small lets me chase something stranger and more particular than the main range could ever justify. Some of these I keep coming back to, remastering the same idea until it says what I wanted it to say. Others exist once and never again. Now and then one ends up on the shelf for good. I rarely know which is which when I bottle them, and that is most of the fun.
They are made in runs small enough that the stall is where they live. Come and try what is on the bench that week, or join the list and I will tell you the moment a new number is bottled.
The formula, the weighing, the wait and the bottle all happen on the same bench in Moss Vale. If that matters to you, the back story is on the maker page.
Every scent in the Register comes as an eau de parfum, an alcohol-free spray or a roll-on oil, and every one of them is unisex.
