Born into nobility, Xin Zhui rose even higher when she married Li Cang and became the Marquise of Dai (popularly known today as the Lady Dai). Li Cang’s appointment as the Chancellor of the Changsha Kingdom elevated the power couple even higher. By 168 BCE, Xin Zhui was 48 years old and one of the…
Category: Herbs
The Odour of Sanctity: When the Dead Smell Divine
If corrupt smells are a sign of a corrupt nature, what happens when a holy person dies? It is in this Western mind-body dualism that the concept of the Odour of Sanctity is born.
Rebozo de Luto: the Aromatic Mourning Shawl of Mexico
There are many ways people mark time when it comes to death, but one of the most elegant is the rebozo de luto or the perfumed mourning shawls.
If A24 Films Were Perfumes
It’s a tradition around these parts that we ring in Halloween with a special post by pairing fragrances with costume ideas, but that did not feel right this year. As we round the corner on year two of this pandemic, I don’t have the bandwidth to pretend as if I might actually be going to…
Victorian Tear Catchers Are Trash
It seems like every year, my colleagues and I have to dispute the myth of Victorian Tear Catchers. I don’t know how or why disproving internet myths about perfume became my life, but here we are. So let’s go a bit deeper than space would allow in that tweet, and let’s hope I never have to…
The Perfumed Lionheart
Richard I of England was blessed with a great head of hair and a great nickname, Cœur de Lion, Lionheart. He was also the great-great-grandson of William the Conqueror. Born into the Plantagenet-Angevin royal family, he inherited immense wealth and privilege even if his parents were the dysfunctional Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Richard…
Spooktacular Fragrance Pairings for Halloween: 2020 Edition
The year was 2015, Obama was still the US president, most of us had never heard of a ‘coronavirus’, no one thought Brexit was really going to happen, JK Rowling hadn’t lost her damn mind, and it was the last time HALLOWEEN FELL ON A SATURDAY! It was the year I started this project, which…
The Redolent Plague Doctor?
We’ve all seen him. A dark figure, robed in black, carrying his long examining stick like a scythe. A pale beak glimpsing out from beyond his broad-brimmed hat. A carrion crow turned man. Such nightmare fuel could only spring forth from the fever dreams of a Dark Age mind, right? His beak stuffed with aromatic…
The Sweet Smell of Plague Preservatives
This post is part of the Scented History of the Plague series. If you are not familiar with the history of the plague in Europe, you may want to pop over to our primer first or learn about why miasma was important to the Black Death. In today’s post, we will be discussing the deliciously…
The Rise of Miasma
This post is part of the Scented History of the Plague series. If you are not familiar with the history of the plague in Europe, you may want to pop over to our primer first. In this post, we’re discussing the rise of Miasma Theory during the Second Pandemic and how it impacted European olfactive…
The Death Scent Project 
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