The documented history of Florida Water begins within the much older tradition of botanical perfumery.
European aromatic waters and eau de cologne had long been prepared by dissolving fragrant botanical materials and essential oils into alcohol. Florida Water emerged from this tradition as an American fragrance style during the early nineteenth century.
It was never confined to one immutable recipe. Nineteenth-century formularies written for pharmacists and druggists record numerous versions, commonly based on lavender and bergamot with ingredients such as lemon, orange, neroli, clove, cinnamon and rose varying between preparations.
That history has a direct connection to our formulation. Bergamot, lemon, lavender, clove and cinnamon, the five essential oils at the heart of Sacred Plants Australia's Agua de Florida, all occur within documented historic Florida Water formulas.
By the nineteenth century, Murray & Lanman had become one of the best-known names associated with Florida Water, but historical records show that numerous druggists and manufacturers were producing their own interpretations.
The fragrance then acquired another life far beyond the perfume counter.
In Lambayeque, northern Peru, contemporary ethnographic research documents agua florida among the perfumes used by curanderos and curanderas during mesadas.
Perfumes may be offered to the ritual mesa, or altar, as part of a practice described as refrescar, meaning "to refresh". Researchers have observed fragrance being used repeatedly within ceremonial work rather than simply worn as personal perfume.
It is a remarkable journey: an aromatic preparation rooted in perfumery became incorporated into living ritual traditions thousands of kilometres from where the commercial fragrance first became established.
Those traditions belong to the communities and practitioners who maintain them. Sacred Plants Australia's Agua de Florida is a contemporary Australian preparation and is not presented as an ancient Peruvian formula or a reproduction of any particular ceremonial recipe.
Our intention is simpler: to offer an Agua de Florida in which the aromatic botanicals are once again visible, identifiable and central to the experience.
