Turning the key...

I wanted to welcome everyone to the Reliquary Perfumes blog, and if you're reading this, I'm so happy you stopped by!

I suppose my interest in fragrances, especially those from niche perfume houses as well as aromatherapy, was one that has been building gradually over the years.  I watched as my perfume collection grew, bottles of all shapes, sizes, colors, samplers spilling out of boxes, it got a bit ridiculous.  However, my real passion for perfumery started this past year when I noticed that upon wearing perfumes to sleep, I would sometimes have the most vivid dreams.   I realized that the sense of smell above all the other senses, has the ability to transport you other places and stir up distant memories you thought you had forgotten.  How is it possible that the lingering perfume trail (or sillage if you want to sound fancy about it) of a stranger in passing can evoke the face of my 3rd grade teacher?  Or when walking down the street in Santa Monica, my husband says out of nowhere that the he smells the same cleaning solution that was used in his high school boy's locker room?  It almost seems like magic.

Having a background in Visual Arts as well as Art History, I wanted to explore this olfactory phenomenon even further.  I started doing extensive research (who knew there was so much chemistry involved?? I'll save that post for another day), piecing together a perfumer's organ with raw materials sourced from around the world to use in my own elixirs.  Do you remember the scene from Mary Poppins when Mary and Bert jump into the chalk drawings on the sidewalk and all of a sudden are magically inside the drawings themselves?  Have you ever wanted to jump into a painting and experience that other world?  Well, I intended to create fragrances that bottle the experience of visual works of art through the sense of smell.  That goal is the seed that blossomed into Reliquary Perfumes.

As Reliquaries are shrines that house sacred objects, items from another time, place or culture - Reliquary Perfumes is a niche perfume line, home to currently seven very unique bottled fragrance experiences.  When you open one of the bottles, look at the painting upon which the perfume is based, let the fragrance enfold your senses, and plunge into the work of art.  Radiant gemstones lie at the bottom of every bottle, each one a portable relic, a key to another world.

- Robyn