Bio
Kirsten Schilling
Kirsten Schilling has a background in printmaking, painting, and art history. She received a BA in Art History with honors in 1996 and went on to study art history at the graduate level for several years more...
Until she began researching and creating period aromatics in 2001. Her historian's curiosity soon conspired with her artist's delight at discovering this sensuous new medium and one day, natural perfumery just snatched her away from the art world, entirely!
Kirsten still feels like a painter. But now, nature is her palette.
She has spent several years volunteering at the Huntington Museum and Botanical Gardens, where she enjoyed the exchange of simple labor for aromatic ingredients, harvested fresh from the Herb Garden.
Kirsten has studied aromatherapy, distillation, herbalism, spagyrics, and perfumery and she currently manages a wholesale essential oil company. Their specialty is importing essential oils and botanicals from Indonesia, Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia, and many of these exotic ingredients find their way into her creations.
Her aromatics also contain water drawn from the holy wells of Ireland, England and France, as well as other pure treasures, such as hand-gathered tree sap or moss, semi-precious stones and botanically-based colorants.
Kirsten was a guest on the aromatherapy tv show Everybody Nose in 2007.
Here she discusses the art of candle making and her use of herbs and spices as natural colorants, based on the methods of medieval dyers.