Jessica Ring in her family forest
Profile: I grew up with five siblings, on a piece of property half native rainforest, and half farmland. My mother is a master botanist and my father is a cedar-strong Vietnam veteran who came to our land to heal after the war. I started gardening when I was five, always with the sensation that the plants loved me. As I grew up, I watched all of the land surrounding ours gradually decimated by clear-cuts. My loathing for our logging community became all-consuming and I eventually threatened to drop out of school. Luckily my parents advocated for me to test out of High School and I entered college at the I-am-so-wise age of 16. It was an exhilarating change. I went into school with the intention of becoming a writer/poet but was quickly hooked by the lure of science. I took Botany, Chemistry, Biology, and Geology for my first semester and was forever changed. Throughout my schooling, I took jobs working in Biology and Chemistry Labs and managing tropical and desert greenhouses and native plant gardens.
Jessica Ring of Ring Botanicals
Yet this story of expansion was a reversible vest, and if the outside was crimson with revelation and daffodiled by joy, the inner layers were growing darker each year as I suffered from undiagnosed endometriosis. It became increasingly difficult to hide that fact that I was slowly becoming disabled by this poorly understood disease. Years of damaging surgeries and treatments and the sorrow and anger that come with the social isolation of unrelenting pain laced my life to the black boot-straps of survival. I started using essential oils as medicine and my aromatic metamorphosis began.
Frankincense and Roses
One evening, after the birth of my son in 2005, I was searching for essential oils online. I saw a small distiller and was flooded with epiphany. I felt like the girl who had just discovered the secret garden. This was the moment when I realized who I was, that all of my seemingly disparate specialties were just spokes on the wheel of perfume. From that point on, my physical state would no longer rule or characterize me. Ring Botanicals rolled into reality when my little brother offered to loan me the money to buy my first distiller and my parents agreed to let me farm our land.
Jessica Blending Aromatics
I make perfume because I believe it is medicine for the soul. I specialize in the distillation of Northwest aromatics, living here in Portland, Oregon, while farming our family land an hour south, in Molalla. My perfumes are exclusively natural – constructed around my collection of over 100 of my own hand-tinctured bases, local distillations, and oil extractions. My purpose is to bring about beauty and joy, while creating a bridge between perfumers, farmers, chemists, and distillers to further our knowledge in this traditionally secretive trade.
Ring Botanicals Distillery
On American Perfumery: If there is anything that makes me feel patriotic it is my work as an Indie Perfumer and Artisan Distiller. It has forced me to find my own way. Early on, I rarely sampled the work of other perfumers’, feeling it was critical to develop my own style first. The plants became my mentors – some of them full of gentle magic, others as ego-cutting as obsidian. Fragrances took on textures, personalities, shapes, colors, and forms of movement.
Distilling lavender copper alembic
During the creation of my Lewis and Clark cologne, I had this odd moment of American pride linked directly with my love of the land and those who revere it. The cast-iron work ethic of the original immigrants anchors me. As women in a country obsessed with outer beauty it is imperative that we share our strength, intelligence, and resourcefulness. Planting the “Perfume Farm” was insanely hard work, but it allowed me and my family to do just that. Our soil is now blanketed by hundreds of lavender plants, rosemary, roses, chamomile, various mints, sages, Artemisia, currents, yarrow, and conifers. I harvest year-round and run my copper still like a rocket destined for a galaxy of secrets. I distill for perfume-quality fragrance and broad therapeutic use. One of my specialties is the co-distillation of many plants at once, creating perfumes fresh out of the still. My last such batch was a combination of White Sage, Lemon Catnip, White Roses, White Pine Pitch, Rosemary, and needles from the oldest Sitka Spruce in North America…..it was very alive, to say the least. Read more about my distillation here.
Mary Oliver -Summer1964
Favorite American Artists: My favorite American artist is the poet, Mary Oliver, whose words bring me back home to myself. And the olfactive artists…I relate deeply to the work of David Falsberg of Phoenicia Perfumes, who has also used perfume to transform suffering into beauty. The aromatics have been a bridge into my community of loving, supportive herbalists, acupuncturists, naturopaths, aromatherapists, perfumers, and distillers. I am grateful for the kindness and intellectual generosity of perfumers and distillers like Dabney Rose, Christi Meshell, Suzinn Weiss, Christopher McMahon, Anya McCoy (who was the first American Perfumer to be feature in CaFleureBon Profiles in American Perfumery July 3, 2011), Jeannie Rose, and Eva Marie Lind. I am humbled by their knowledge and passion for the art of perfumery every day.
Jessica Ring, Founder, Distiller and Natural Perfumer for Ring Botanicals
Jessica Ring's formula journal
Editor’s note: Jessica teaches classes on distillation and natural perfume blending at various west coast locations throughout the year and is a member of the Natural Perfumers Guild. She was featured in Cafleurebon Perfumers Workshop Series on The Art of Natural Distillation by Perfumer and Contributor David Falsberg. Want to learn more about natural essential oils and distillation? Join Jessica Ring's Facebook Group Artisan Essential Oil Distillers.
Thanks to Jessica we have a WORLDWIDE reader’s choice of one of the following Ring Botanicals 100 percent natural perfumes: 15 ml spray Ring of Fire *BRAND NEW*, 15 ml spray Lewis and Clark, 10 ml roll-on Gingerella, 10 ml roll-on Copal Rose or 10 ml roll-on Lavender Spruce. OR a sample set of all Ring Botanicals nine colognes and perfumes. Please indicate which you would like. To be eligible, please leave a comment indicating what you found fascinating about Jessica Ring and her path as an American Perfumer and where you live. Draw ends June 11, 2014.
Please like CaFleureBon Profiles in American Perfumery on Facebook and your entry will count twice.
We announce the winners on our site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize wil be just spilled perfume