Tuesday, Jan 11, 2022 • 44min
Guest Episode: Scents and Sensibility
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Gastropod is excited to present this guest episode of Outside/In called Scents and Sensibility. Once upon a time, potpourri was a popular way to freshen up a space. Now, for some, it feels a bit like the lava lamp of fragrance: an outdated fad from a bygone decade. Why was potpourri so popular in the 1980’s, and what happened to it? Did the trend dry up, or just evolve? In this episode, Outside/In explores the transformation of potpourri, from the fermented mush of the Victorian era to the perfumed and colorful bag of pine cones of the eighties, and talks to a few of the people still making potpourri today.
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Talking about
Speakers
(10)
Taylor Quimby
Justine Paradis
Laure Moutet
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Transcript
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Nicola Twilley
00:02
Hello and Happy New Year, and in case that New Year party was a real rager. Here's what you need to know, you're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history. I'm Nicola Twilley.
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Cynthia Graber
00:15
And I'm Cynthia Graber, and we are working hard on new episodes for this bright New Year, and as we do so we thought we'd share some other shows we enjoy.
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00:23
Today it's all about those bowls of dried bits of leaves and flowers that used to be so popular to freshen up a room.
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Nicola Twilley
00:29
She's talking about potpourri folks and some of our youngest listeners may not even know what this is because honestly it seems to have vanished, but growing up, there was always a dish of random dried stuff that smelled vaguely floral in the downstairs guest toilet.
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Cynthia Graber
00:46
That's exactly where potpourri always was, and I haven't really thought about it for decades, but the folks that Outside/In have, we are running a fun guest episode from them, for all of you.
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Nicola Twilley
00:56
If you're not familiar, Outside/In is an awesome show, all about the natural world and how we use it. But you don't have to be a super outdoorsy type who spend your weekends mountain climbing and snowboarding and whitewater rafting.
Share
01:09
You can just be someone who's interested in such random but fascinating questions as whether animals get seasonal allergies too, or how much bigger
New Hampshire
would be if you flattened out the mountains, spoiler, still pretty tiny.Share
Cynthia Graber
01:23
But they also tackle big questions like why did the community that lived on
Easter Island
collapse? Can ecotourism be actually eco? And if that's not big enough, what is the origin of life itself?Share
Nicola Twilley
01:35
All very good reasons to subscribe, which you should do. But first, you know, you want to get to the bottom of this potpourri mystery, how did something that started as fermented mush in Victorian
England
turn into pine cones in American suburbia, and who's still making potpourri today? Listen to the show and then go subscribe to Outside/in.Share
Taylor Quimby
01:57
Hey, Justine Paradis.
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Justine Paradis
01:58
Hey, Taylor Quimby.
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Taylor Quimby
01:60
Do you ever remember, you know something from your childhood that at the time seemed totally normal, like, you know just the way the world is, but then in retrospect, you look back and find it totally and utterly baffling?
Share
Justine Paradis
02:12
I mean, I guess like, low rise jeans completely unacceptable at this point, you know, for me.
Share
Taylor Quimby
02:20
A lot of fashion feels that way when you look back at it.
Share
Justine Paradis
02:23
Yes, but low rise jeans, in particular, like cut you off in a deeply uncomfortable way, like sitting is uncomfortable., I personally find the high rise, just much more flat, like it just doesn't make any sense that they would be low rise.
Share
Taylor Quimby
02:38
Okay. Yeah, well, I, I can't speak to that one, but I will tell you that for me that thing is potpourri.
Share
02:45
Like, I remember once picking up a bowl of potpourri on a side table in my living room? And just thinking like why, why, like what is this? And uh, I have since pulled some of our GenX and elder millennial colleagues and I have confirmed that I am not the only one.
Share
03:03
Do you remember potpurri being like a big thing in the '80s and '90s?
Share
03:09
Yes!
Share
03:10
Potpourri was everywhere.
Share
03:11
Weird herbs and bits in the bowl
Share
03:13
Top of the toilet, you know, coffee table, everywhere.
Share
03:16
I mean, I don't know to me, it's sort of like the sort of
Reagan
era, like "it's morning again in America"
at the same time that like Pac-Man was big.Share
Taylor Quimby
03:25
I will say, however, that the potpourri trend doesn't seem to have infiltrated every home in this era.
Share
03:32
I don't want to say it was mostly white people, but certainly in my experience it was.
Share
03:36
I never had it at my house because my dad got a headache from anything that smelled funny and the first time I saw it at my friend's house, I was like this, and I took, I took a bite out of it, it did not taste good.
Share
Justine Paradis
03:45
Nick took a bite out of it.
Share
Taylor Quimby
03:47
What would you list just in terms of the types of ingredients that you might find in a bowl of potpourri. What kinds of things?
Share
03:54
Dead flowers.
Share
03:55
Dried rose petals as like the go to.
Share
03:57
Close cinnamon sticks, beans or peas.
Share
04:01
Little bits of wood.
Share
04:02
Wood chips.
Share
04:03
Like little sticks.
Share
04:04
Tiny pine cones, which quite cute actually.
Share
04:07
Dried orange peel.
Share
04:08
Dried orange pieces, that's what I tried to eat. It was terrible.
Share
Justine Paradis
04:12
I do feel like it's like the word salad, where it's just like anything can go in a salad, you know.
Share
Taylor Quimby
04:17
The thing about potpourri though is that it wasn't just sort of quiet home decor fad that we've all forgotten about. Like, it really broke into mainstream culture.
Share
04:24
Before I saw at anybody's house, I just knew it as a category in jeopardy, that sort of meant everything.
Share
04:29
Categories potpourri.
Share
04:31
Potpourri.
Share
04:31
It's potpourri.
Share
04:32
Potpourri.
Share
04:34
It smells so good up here. I wish I could send some of the smell up in there.
Share
04:38
And I also remember the commercials, like the
Glade
commercials, right Country, It's all very sexist now that I think about it.Share
Nicola Twilley
04:49
Yeah, I remember this episode of Friends when the entire joke of the episode is how girly potpourri is.
Share
05:01
I mean it seems like a sort of ubiquitous mom, aunt gift.
Share
05:05
Roughly coincided with the rise of too many throw pillows on your couch.
Share
05:09
You know, sort of incense without the like sort of counterculture.
Share
Taylor Quimby
05:21
And yet when I, when I think about it, I feel like I feel like Potpourri compared to all these other things from the '80s and '90s just isn't associated with the era in the same way, but I'll say this with all the pandemic home crafting going on, I have been clued into the fact that there is this very quiet potpourri revival going on and it's got me asking all these questions like what's the deal with potpourri?
Share
05:49
Why did it get here? And why does anybody particularly think it's a great idea?
Share
05:53
Where did it come from?
Share
05:54
I would be curious to learn when it really like phased out.
Share
05:57
Wherefore art thou potpourri?
Share
Taylor Quimby
06:03
Yeah, you gotta fall to your knees in the rain when you say.
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Justine Paradis
06:05
This, you ask the hard questions Taylor, always in your journalism.
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Taylor Quimby
06:09
That's what I do.
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Justine Paradis
06:25
This is Outside/In a show about the natural world and how we use it. I'm Justine Paradise, on today's episode, Taylor Quimby brings us sense and sensibility.
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06:35
Once upon a time, potpourri was used as a natural way to freshen up a space, now for some it seems a bit like the lava lamp of fragrance, an outdated bad from a bygone era.
Share
Taylor Quimby
06:47
Or is it? Did the potpourri trend dry up or just evolve?
Share
06:52
In this episode. We're tracking the scent of Potpourri from its origins in the Victorian era through the Potpourri boom of the 1980s and all the way to today.
Share
07:18
It's an over simplistic stereotype that
the Middle Ages
in Europe
smelled bad. Yes, there would have definitely been some particularly pungent odors, but people really cared about smell.Share
Yvette Weaver
07:29
So there's rosemary, there's lavenders, there's oregano, there's a lot of fragrance happening, and they're sweet alyssum, which has just got a beautiful honey scent.
Share
Taylor Quimby
07:38
And that's why a flower called "Rosa Gallica" or the "Apothecary's Rose" was the most popular, most coveted variety of rose in
Europe
for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.Share
Yvette Weaver
07:49
They're just intoxicating. Like you just, you have to stop and smell the roses like, you really truly cannot pass by them without leaning over and smelling them.
Share
Taylor Quimby
08:02
This is Yvette Weaver, an assistant horticulturalist at the MetCloisters, which is essentially a medieval monastery or a museum designed to look like one at the northern tip of
Manhattan
.Share
08:15
There are unicorn tapestries, frescoes, stained-glass and a medieval garden with plants historically used as medicine as poison for cooking and those used especially for scent. And there's one I want to talk about in particular, the apothecaries rose.
Share
Carly Still
08:32
The sweet honey fragrance that I really say it's like medicine for the soul, like you really, you want that in your body.
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Taylor Quimby
08:42
Here's Yvette's colleague Carly Still managing horticulturalist at the MetCloisters. The smell of the apothecaries rose. Well, it's right there in the name, it was the basis of an entire industry. The main ingredient of many an apothecary product.
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Carly Still
08:56
Rose water or rose honey or the rose petals just sprinkled in drawers, they could be sort of molded into little rosary beads, get it rosary beads.
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Taylor Quimby
09:10
Anyway, the apothecaries, rose was also the basis of, you guessed it, potpourri. Early potpourri was made in a fermentation process that by today's standards might be considered pretty unpleasant. It was almost like floral compost over the course of spring and summer, one might keep tossing in pedals or spices. The mixture would wilt and rot until the sickly sweet smell became almost nauseating.
Share
09:39
The process sounds a little like cooking, and you know, it's fermentation so it kind of was, which makes sense then when you look at the history of the word potpourri, which initially was a French translation for a category of Spanish or Portuguese meat stew and what it translated to was rotten pot.
Share
09:60
Victorian potpourri is described as a gray wet, sometimes moldy mixture. It wasn't meant to be used for decoration. Rather, it was a natural perfume, an olfactory snapshot of spring preserved and hidden in special perforated jars that released the scent without revealing the contents. The 19th century version of a glade plug in.
Share
10:21
I wanted to see for myself what Victorian era potpourri might have looked and smelled like. So I looked for a recipe, the oldest one I could get my hands on came from an 1895 book called "Sweet Scented Flowers and Fragrant Leaves".
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10:39
The following mixture is set to retain its fragrance for 50 years, gather early in the day when perfectly dry a peck of roses, pick off the pedals and strew them over three quarters of a pound of common salt.
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10:52
The recipe calls for a peck of rose petals, which is about two and third gallons. I did my best, converting measurements down, for the two pints of petals. I plucked from a standard grocery store bouquet. "We're gonna need a bigger bowl".
Share
11:07
I'll put the recipe on our website, but basically you lay freshly plucked petals over gobs and gobs of salt for a few days. Once they've begun to moisten and wilt, you add cloves, allspice, more salt, brown sugar.
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11:26
Something called orris root powder, made from the roots of an iris and used to soak up and preserve the smell of the roses and my favorite ingredient, Brandy. "It says to add one Gill of Brandy, but I don't know what a gill is". A gill is a quarter of a pint. "We will be doing Courvoisier, little for me". "Oh that smells awful", that's my son Phineas, he's 10.
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11:55
At first, the mixture looked rather pretty, the petals were turning a rich shade of raspberry, the spices gave them a gritty pulpy look, but as time went on, juices seeped to the bottom of the Tupperware, which is ruined forever by the way and the pedals darkened to a deep burgundy wine and eventually the color of blood and dirt.
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Justine Paradis
12:16
This is not what I had in mind.
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Taylor Quimby
12:18
I dropped a jar off with Justine to take a look.
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Justine Paradis
12:20
It looks like a pile of stewed meat.
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Taylor Quimby
12:24
Like giant wet crazins.
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Justine Paradis
12:25
Used bandages, but still wet.
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Taylor Quimby
12:31
Wow, put that on your coffee table and smell it.
Share
12:36
But even stranger than the look was the smell, which to me anyway, well let's just say it gave me a migraine, but before you open that jar, I just I'm a little worried about you actually because I know that you're in your closet, and it's a small space and that is a powerful jar of intense smelling potpourri. Like, do not stick your nose in that job.
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Justine Paradis
12:57
Oh, really? I would have done that, so.
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Taylor Quimby
12:59
Do not do that, you will.
Share
Justine Paradis
13:00
Do not do it.
Share
Taylor Quimby
13:01
You'll be out of commission for the rest of the day.
Share
Justine Paradis
13:03
Jesus Christ, okay, um okay, I'm like nervous, I'm going to open the closet door.
Share
Taylor Quimby
13:10
If you know, if you want to, if you want to like to bring your mic outside, I think that would be fine.
Share
Justine Paradis
13:15
I think I'll be okay. Oh, I don't think it's that bad
Share
Taylor Quimby
13:27
How good! Oh, I'm so, I'm so pleased to hear that.
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Justine Paradis
13:31
It kind of smells like, cider.
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Taylor Quimby
13:35
What you're probably smelling is the brandy, because the roses themselves just weren't that fragrant.
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Justine Paradis
13:43
Oh yeah, so that makes sense, like, this is not the "Apothecaries Rose".
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Taylor Quimby
13:48
Right, right. I'm sure I could have gotten them if I really wanted to work at it and spend a bunch of the radio station's money, but you know for this story, I just went to the grocery store and this is what you can get.
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Justine Paradis
13:59
Well, I actually think that you did a nice job and I think I don't know how you would present this potpourri and because it is true that it doesn't, it doesn't look great, but maybe that's just in the eye of the beholder, like, I don't know, I can see, I can see it having its place.
Share
Taylor Quimby
14:15
So how did potpourri go from this, the rotten pot, to something so popular? It became an iconic object of the '80s.
Share
14:23
It smells great.
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Taylor Quimby
14:25
Popular enough even to be made by Martha Stewart.
Share
14:27
Here's some more lemon peel look at it, isn't it a beautiful color?
Share
14:31
You can do your own lemon peel, you just peel the lemon and dry it, right?
Share
Taylor Quimby
14:35
The famed apothecaries rose, the one I substituted for cheap flowers from the produce section is a perfect flower for sweet smelling potpourri, but when you breed a flower for smell, there are sometimes trade-offs. Their bushes are a little stubbier the stems not so long, and you have to catch them at just the right time. Again, here's Yvette weaver.
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Yvette Weaver
14:56
That period of time that it's blooming is much shorter than, you know, our newer roses just in general.
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Taylor Quimby
15:03
And so in the 19th and 20th centuries breeders started experimenting with other varieties of roses that bloomed longer and more regularly and roses that could be cut shipped and shown around the world. The "Apothecaries Rose" fell out of favor and what took its place had plenty to swoon over, but not as much to smell. Here's Carly Still.
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Carly Still
15:23
Roses that we find in the florist are just like sort of packed and packed with petals, but without the fragrant side of it.
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Taylor Quimby
15:36
And I suspect that's one of the reasons moist potpourri is a thing of the past. I mean, why bother with a wet, time-consuming process if the whole point is to capture a smell that's barely there?
Share
15:48
Over the 20th century, Potpourri recipes stopped calling for a process of flour fermentation and started incorporating pre dried flowers instead. You might be able to guess a few of the reasons not only was the apothecaries rose less available at this time, the recipe would have been less messy, a little nicer to look at and less time-consuming.
Share
16:09
So the question becomes, how did it get everywhere? At least everywhere in 1980s Middle Class America.
Share
16:16
I don't even believe it's real that potpourri isn't real, is it?
Share
16:19
It's like the carnation of room fresheners, right?
Share
16:22
Like the smell doesn't, is not just from dried flowers, isn't it also perfume in there?
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Taylor Quimby
16:27
Well, that's the story best explained by someone who's been dubbed "the queen of potpourri", one of the biggest bulk manufacturers of the stuff during its heyday, Laure Moutet.
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Laure Moutet
16:36
I was in the property business from 1980 till 2006.
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Taylor Quimby
16:44
In the early 1970s, popular tastes and smells are starting to shift.
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Laure Moutet
16:49
So people got a little tired of Glade.
Share
16:51
I'd like to introduce you to
Glade's
new air freshener.Share
Taylor Quimby
16:56
The environmental movement was taking off and potpourri was becoming a fashionable and quote unquote "natural trend for high-end consumers" and the big cosmetics and fragrance companies wanted in on the heretofore rather niche potpourri game. The thing is these companies already made perfume, they had the smell part taken care of.
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Laure Moutet
17:16
So they would come with the packaging, they would come with the name, they would come with the fragrance, and they would tell me make up a print.
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Taylor Quimby
17:26
Laure's clients included big brands like
Mary Kay
, Revlon
and Avon,
and they'd come to her with very specific ideas in mind. Not only did they already have the perfume, they'd have the packaging, the branding, everything, everything that is, but the potpourri itself.Share
17:44
Now, Potpourri had shifted a bit already from the fermented wet potpourri of the Victorian era to a dried product one easier to produce, transport and sell, but it still wasn't mass market.
Share
Laure Moutet
17:55
It was still what I call the class market. You know, the Paparazzi was $25 a bag, the flowers were real flowers, and they were aromatic flowers, there were traditional flowers like lavender smells, and it was all very cute and expensive.
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Taylor Quimby
18:13
And so in order to scale up and transform potpourri from a small batch garden craft to a big batch product, Laure had to solve a couple big challenges.
Share
18:22
Problem number one: the classical potpourri flowers, not just roses, but lavenders and chamomiles, they were too expensive. Problem number two: they were too fragile. And problem number three, the plants that did smell good, we're actually interfering with the smells of the perfume.
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Laure Moutet
18:41
The top notes all the citrus note, all the fresh note, the orange, the citrusy, and you said "mmm so fresh". Forget about it, by the time you buy the property those are gone, we enjoyed it, not you.
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Taylor Quimby
18:54
Basically, if Laure wasn't careful, customers could wind up getting the after smell of the perfume combined with the smell of musty dead flowers. So she started trying to pair fragrances that could cover the smell of botanicals with botanicals that had almost no smell at all. A scheme that is practically the very opposite of Victorian potpourri.
Share
19:18
The options in France were too expensive, Laure says. So she turned to her suppliers in
India
.Share
Laure Moutet
19:24
We said to them, "listen, we need botanicals that are available in large quantity that are sustainable. Even then, that do not break when they are blended and actually do not interfere very much with fragrances".
Share
Taylor Quimby
19:39
India
had everything Laure was looking for and more.Share
Laure Moutet
19:42
You have a lot of forest there and that you have also a lot of beans, a lot of stuff coming out of the trees. And then we also went to the foothills of the
Himalayas
to get all kinds of bank loans.Share
Taylor Quimby
19:52
But it wasn't just the plants in
India
, Laure could contract with local companies. Companies that already had a network of rural workers helping to supply India's
herbal medicine industry. Those workers could collect dry and even modify botanicals for potpourri on the cheap because it wasn't just the smell and look of potpourri that was being changed, it was also the color.Share
Laure Moutet
20:14
You know, people became more demanding saying, oh, but you know, can I have this spental number and can I have this spental number which required the botanicals to be bleached, bleached and died so that we had access to the pastel color.
Share
Taylor Quimby
20:27
The brands didn't literally come to Law with Pantone paint swatches, but people wanted the potpourri to match the packaging. And so Laure had her suppliers bleach and dye botanicals in order to color coordinate like you would with a dress or sweater.
Share
20:43
Potpourri was becoming an object of design, a product that reflected not the seasons but the fashion seasons.
Share
Laure Moutet
20:49
And all that was done in
India
because the labor is cheap the land is fairly available where it was made. It was very convenient.Share
Taylor Quimby
21:01
I reached out to a botanist at the Royal botanic gardens in
Kew
to ask whether the foreign ingredients being used for potpourri during this time were sustainable. He told me that on the whole, yeah, they are. But he did have concerns about labor.Share
21:17
In
India
rural workers like these have often been exploited or underpaid and much of the potpourri boom came before the birth of the modern fair trade movement, Laure sent me a few photos from India
of died plants laid on the ground in fast colorful carpets.Share
21:32
Workers in black rubber gloves, dunking bowls of dried bean pods into bleach or lotus leaves into yellow dye. It wasn't a factory per se, but this was also not a cottage industry, and it is wild to think that this operation was for a product as quaint and unassuming as bags of potpourri.
Share
21:53
Regardless, even those indian botanicals were not cheap enough to properly scale up. In the 1990s, Laure started taking on bigger and bigger orders, eventually landing a contract to make and deliver six million bags of Potpourri, which is one for every human being in
Denmark
.Share
Laure Moutet
22:11
As the demand for potpourri ballooned and went to
Target
, Walmart
and all those mass market company, we had to find something else to feel those pop free and also to lower the price. And here came the wood cones and the wood shavings.Share
Taylor Quimby
22:29
Wood shavings made from common pine harvested in
Arkansas
and North Carolina
.Share
Laure Moutet
22:35
If you cut it in a certain way, it's like butter, you know when you pull the butter with a knife, and it curls, well that's a wood cone.
Share
Taylor Quimby
22:43
We are talking about the same stuff you put in the bottom of a hamster cage. And it was in this way that the Potpourri Trends of the 20th century began to take its final form, instead of bags filled with small bits and pieces from flowers and leaves. This potpourri was a handful of bulky but lightweight statement pieces popped into a bag.
Share
Laure Moutet
23:05
You would see a wood cone, you would see a curly pot, you would see a cotton pot, you would see some star anise, you would see. So it makes a very clean potpourri.
Share
Taylor Quimby
23:16
Laure and others had transformed potpourri into something that the Victorians wouldn't even have recognized. It was bleached and dyed a mix of imported fruit pods and shavings from pine trees. Laure's potpourri was mixed in stainless steel blenders so big an adult human could fit inside and to make it smell good fragrance was sprayed into the blender with an honest to goodness paint sprayer.
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Laure Moutet
23:38
It was big, it was like a concrete blender, you know, one of those huge thing and all in stainless steel inside and teflon, it was great, you could clean it like a whistle.
Share
Taylor Quimby
23:54
So that is the story of how potpourri bloomed and transformed during the boom of the 1980 and '90s before rather suddenly drying up in the two thousands.
Share
Laure Moutet
24:04
And then the sticks came, the centered sticks fitted very well with the minimalist decor doors and kind of stuff that we, that most people have now, and the pop three became again a specialty item.
Share
Taylor Quimby
24:18
So what about potpourri today? Why am I talking about potpourri in 2021?
Share
Autumn Anderson
24:25
The moss is just, you know, real earthy, and I'm telling you earthy.
Share
Taylor Quimby
24:30
I like the smell of dirt that's coming up after a break.
Share
24:46
This is Outside/in a show about the natural world and how we use it, I'm Taylor Quimby, and today I have been talking as you know about potpurri. What I've come to appreciate about potpourri, having reported this story, is that it isn't really anything in particular. It's just an idea, a mixture of things that may or may not belong together.
Share
25:09
It reminds me of those scented candles, warm summer breeze or crisp fall night. There are no hard and fast rules to potpourri, and maybe they never were the word that once referred to Portuguese stew and then to the smell of a bathroom air freshener is used today to refer to literally anything: a potpourri of poetry or jeopardy category for misfit questions.
Share
25:31
And so in this half of the episode, I want to introduce you to three people that are making potpourri or something like it all their own. And I'm going to start with Autumn.
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Autumn Anderson
25:41
You can use my whole name, i's Autumn Hudnut Anderson, so how about that? It's Hudnut, can you believe? That's my mid-name.
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Taylor Quimby
25:50
I found Autumn in one of the modern world's biggest potpourri markets,
Etsy
. There are all kinds here, straight up floral potpourri, potpourri is with little holiday decorations. Autumn has some of the most interesting mixtures on the site, tupelo, honey and maple apple bourbon.Share
26:06
You can't help but notice trends. Based on my experience scrolling,
Etsy
, a lot of the potpourri being sold today does seem to be made by white ladies in the American south, But autumn in the upper peninsula of Michigan
has been doing it longer than most of them.Share
Autumn Anderson
26:20
1979 spellbound since 1979.
Share
Taylor Quimby
26:25
That is, that's a serious 42 years.
Share
Autumn Anderson
26:29
Not supposed to add it up. I have made pokery out of leather straps and just everything. It's an obsession, it's really an obsession.
Share
Taylor Quimby
26:47
What's the weirdest, what's the weirdest thing you've ever put in your dehydrator? Just to try it out?
Share
Autumn Anderson
26:51
Well, I dehydrated some, I shouldn't say this, I'll get in trouble, some bumblebees that were, we're very annoying to us, just a couple just two, they weren't pollinators, they would be to eat your house, and they dehydrated rather nicely.
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Taylor Quimby
27:13
Autumn says that the late '70s and '80s were potpourri heaven, but then suddenly the business dried up. She persisted and continued trying to hawk her wares at the local renaissance fair in upper
Michigan
, and she says the past five years, even before the pandemic started, has been making a comeback.Share
Autumn Anderson
27:34
Everybody would tease me like, oh you're bringing out your potpourri jars again, nobody buys it, they don't even know what it is and everybody would go look past it, but I just love this stuff, so I'd bring it, and we get a few sales and that was about it, and then they started buying more and more and then buying gifts, and then I went online. And so now they buy me online. Now, I have probably 26 varieties. I had to buy a whole another shop at the festival.
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Taylor Quimby
28:05
One of the most popular varieties she has leans on a weird trend that I have seen elsewhere lately, "moss in a bowl". Autumn has been collecting moss and ferns and mushrooms and packaging it as a rainforest potpourri, and it's killing it with the younger crowd.
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Autumn Anderson
28:25
I'm telling you, I haven't been able to make enough of it, people like it, It smells like dirt, honest to God, it smells like dirt. I've got cedar and sweet grass and I have this dirt sent and, the moss is just, you know, real earthy.
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28:45
It's gotten so much attention that
Maker's Mark
ah had me make a whole bunch of potpourri for their, one of their ads, and they put their newest Maker's Mark
bottle in it and then send it to their advertisers. And the first thing the lady wanted to know is if I could make it smell even more dank, it was a fun project.Share
Taylor Quimby
29:12
Did you get any free whiskey?
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Autumn Anderson
29:13
No, I didn't.
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Taylor Quimby
29:17
That's a shame.
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29:25
Autumns potpourri breaks the mold, so to speak, it reminds us that well, you might want to make sure you're not collecting anything endangered or poisonous. The no rule's nature of potpourri is a type of freedom. If the stuffy bathroom bowls of the '80s weren't your thing, it doesn't mean that there's not a mix for you now.
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Ednita Tingle
29:46
It is in full regalia down here, we are full of dogwoods and maple trees and bloom and cherry blossoms and all of the goodness of the south.
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Taylor Quimby
29:58
So, the next person I want to introduce you to is named Ednita Tingle. Ednita is the owner of roots and blooms floral and gifts in Atlanta. I asked her to jump on a Zoom call with me way back when I started to do this story, so she could give me some tips on drying stuff, I got from my local florist, and I want you to channel her absolute adoration for plants.
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Ednita Tingle
30:18
If I could see that stem again, I think he gave you.
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Taylor Quimby
30:21
Spiral eucalyptus.
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Ednita Tingle
30:23
Oh wow, look at that, see we don't even have that down here, that particular variety of you can look at that, I love it.
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Taylor Quimby
30:31
Because truth be told is not really appropriate kind of person.
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Ednita Tingle
30:34
Do you remember, like the turquoise blue potpurri? Like what, why is that blue?
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Taylor Quimby
30:39
But she is all about getting more out of the same flowers you put in a vase, drying them, watching how they cycle through the seasons. She's even been doing workshops how to take dried plants and make a sort of non holiday wreath.
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Ednita Tingle
30:52
Things like yaro, fissile, broom corn, wait, I have a list, I actually prepared myself and my best
NPR
like I'm such an NPR
person, anyway I have a list.Share
Taylor Quimby
31:05
So for her property doesn't have to live in a bowl. It doesn't have to be dyed or scented. Let those flowers turn golden, watch how they change.
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Autumn Anderson
31:14
So what I encourage people to do is to sort of go outside and to kind of forge a little bit what's naturally present and allowing those things to go through their life cycle a bit and see how they preserve. You will see a way to bring outside in, no matter what season.
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Taylor Quimby
31:32
I don't know if you remember from my email, but the name of our show is actually outside in, that was like, that was like a marketing tagline you just gave us.
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Autumn Anderson
31:41
Yes, I'm here for the wind, that's awesome.
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31:47
When we reimagine the word potpurri and understand its original intent, we can reimagine it today, right, make it, make it new, make it fresh and a wreath, and then it will do that magical thing that flowers do, which is just make you happy.
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Taylor Quimby
32:10
And finally, I want to introduce you to someone who is making some old-fashioned potpourri, the dried kind not fermented from backyard roses plucked and packaged as a pandemic side gig.
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Paulus
32:24
You get seven months into a global pandemic without work, and you start saying, well, perhaps we have to adapt.
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Taylor Quimby
32:31
This is Paulus, he's a cabaret performer in
England
, somewhat famous for his role as the tough judge in a British reality TV talent show.Share
32:44
It's called "All Together Now" and the gimmick is that there are 100 judges, each one from a different creative discipline, during every performance. Judges stand to indicate their approval, Paulus rarely gets out of his chair.
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32:57
It's 97% of them, but not everyone did, Paulus, come on Paulus you didn't stand up for that, and most of the 100 did. Why did you not stand up?
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Paulus
33:11
No, I didn't stand up. Not that it wasn't good Jody, it was good, but for me there's too many trills and licks and flicks. It didn't work for me.
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33:20
Did not work for Paulus.
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Taylor Quimby
33:22
I get the impression Paulus is actually something of a softie, he says the show's producers encouraged his role as hard to impress.
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Paulus
33:29
We know that these things are a game show and there's a game to play, and I played the game just like the contestants did.
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Taylor Quimby
33:36
Like a lot of performers, Paulus had a really hard time during the pandemic.
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Paulus
33:40
Like thousands of other freelance creatives, I lost thousands of pounds worth of work overnight.
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Taylor Quimby
33:49
And it wasn't just financial hardship, Paulus, the kind of person who lives for Stagecraft. So he didn't just lose income. He lost some of his sense of purpose.
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Paulus
33:58
You know, I haven't had a round of applause for a really long time. I um I'm sad to say that it's something I well, I think it's something I need or have needed, it's something I definitely expect, and it's very weird without it. I know that none of that is very healthy or adults, by the way, but it's just the truth.
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Taylor Quimby
34:22
And so during the tough months of
covid
lockdowns, which it's worth reminding were a lot tougher in the UK
. He started selling potpourri made from the David Austin roses he grows in his garden.Share
Paulus
34:33
So basically my house is now covered full of buckets. I don't know if you can see this, I know you can't hear it, but buckets full of roses of different varieties, and they go in the bucket after they're properly dried.
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Taylor Quimby
34:52
Paulus knows potpourri is a bit cheesy, but he's a cabaret performer and sometimes cheese is part of the act.
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Paulus
34:58
I guess the eighties was the last time in the
UK
that potpourri was cool.Share
Taylor Quimby
35:03
But it's more than that. For him, there's a certain kind of belonging in potpourri, Paulus, grew up not knowing how to talk to his peers in school at the bus stop, and instead he made friends with the older ladies who ran his local amateur theater club.
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Paulus
35:19
So I just hung out with older ladies and cups of tea and scones and things like potpourri and raffles and things like that. They were my life, and there was a comfort to, to these people, these older people that I didn't get from people of my own age.
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Taylor Quimby
35:37
In this past year, Paulus has spread that comfort to his fans during a time when he couldn't perform the way he used, the way he needed to.
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Paulus
35:46
So yeah, I have felt loved, I have felt loved by complete strangers from different corners of the globe and if they want to show their love by buying my potpourri, even if that's just a pity purchase that I feel that love and I take that love and I thank them for it.
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Taylor Quimby
36:09
Back in the rotten pot days of potpourri, it was especially organic. I don't mean organically farmed or anything, I mean that it was like literally decaying, it was funky, and it was slow. You tended it like a campfire, throwing a few more petals here, some salt there, give it a stir every now and again.
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36:36
The people who made Potpourri were brewing something up that seemed to have a purpose. The potpourri of the 1980s that had a purpose too, but there was something else, an aesthetic, an object of fashion and that, that is what went out of style at the turn of the century.
Share
36:59
Today, it seems like people are taking what they want from the past and making something different, something new. Now everybody gets to decide what potpourri is and what it means to them. I think I prefer to think about it like Paulus, does potpourri is a vehicle for love or joy? Something that makes you want to stop and smell the roses, regardless of how fragrant they actually are.
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37:25
Justine, I want you to have that little jar of potpourri.
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Justine Paradis
37:29
Really? This is for me.
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Taylor Quimby
37:31
Yeah, it's for you, it's a gift.
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Justine Paradis
37:33
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Quimby
37:34
You're welcome. I'm really so glad you like it because I was going to give it to you either way.
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Justine Paradis
37:40
And that would have to be like a gift horse.
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Taylor Quimby
37:42
Thanks, in the trash.
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Justine Paradis
37:45
No, it's really nice.
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38:00
This episode of Outside/In was produced by Taylor Quimby, and it was edited by me, Justine Paradise. We had additional editing, support from Felix Poon, Jessica Hunt and Rebecca Lavoie, who is also our executive producer. Special thanks to all of the NHPR folks who dished for our potpourri memory montage, Nick Capodice, Josh Rogers, Emily Quirk, Patricia McLaughlin, Rick Ganley, and again, Rebecca Lavoie. Also, special thanks to Dr Rosalyn LaPier, Mark Nesbit, Kimberly Marshall and Ester Marie Jackson.
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38:32
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Ben Nestor. Don't forget, we are a production of a public radio station, so please consider donating to support the show. You can offer your monetary donation at outsideinradio. org, but we suppose you could also express your support with a handmade jar of potpourri. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
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🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.36.0
Nicola Twilley
Cynthia Graber
Taylor Quimby
Justine Paradis
Yvette Weaver
Carly Still
Laure Moutet
Autumn Anderson
Ednita Tingle
Paulus