The Apothecary

An Apothecary Grinding Herbs, from The Illustrated Library Shakespeare,

published London 1890 (litho)

This I should have written on June 21st. I am way behind. June 21st was when I wore The Apothecary, of which a bottle arrived together with Smoky Moon.


The Apothecary comes from the Illyria series, scents based on characters in plays from Shakespeare. This is the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the one who provided Romeo with the bottle of quick-acting poison he asked for, so that he could 'die with a kiss'. I think we all know the drama of that story.


The lab description of The Apothecary is:

Tea leaf with three mosses, green grass, a medley of herbal notes, and a drop of ginger and fig.

This newly bought lab-fresh bottle did not smell quite as I remembered the probably very aged imp that I once had smelled. It was (how surprising) a fresher green scent. I remembered it to be darker with the mosses, but I am sure it will get this quality with time. Most of the green scents I have tried lately had a very light, fairy-like quality (which wasn't surprising as they were Fae and Leanan Sidhe, to name two). The Apothecary is much more grounded. And then it has the ginger note! I have found that I much enjoy ginger notes and in this scent the ginger gives a nice fresh-spicy twist to the mosses, tea and herbs of the apothecary. I am not sure what the fig note is. I would have to compare a couple of scents with fig notes to figure that out, I suppose. Or just wear The Apothecary more often.