Hyraceum Absolute African Stone

I spend far more time with animalics that one should before deciding to offer them or not but it takes a lot of time to decide if it will be a useful material for the natural perfumer, if there is ethical or questionable harvesting of the material and if I think it will add the warm musk notes I know that most of us are searching for. Hyraceum checks all the good animal extract boxes. The animal does his business on the rocks, they become petrified and someone collects it for processing – just your typical poo to perfumery cycle of things.

The absolute has been sitting in the apothecary for almost two years, quietly aging with the ambergris and 2014 Castoreum and 1958 sandalwood. Turns out, I like this material. Tinctured, it’s sexy and powdery with notes that won’t replace musk but certainly add like minded musk notes to florals and fougeres that require that funky, dirge note to beef up the composition. I like it paired with our aged castoreum and a little tickle of jasmine sambac or neroli as a mini accord but this would be a beautiful study of building scent in horizontal accords. I hope to hear back from those perfumers that do.

Suggested use: Helpful when building musk accords in natural perfumery compositions.