Exploring the weird & wonderful world of fragrance & funerals
Over the last year I have had several requests for more information and deeper reads on subjects brought up on the blog. So after banging around my shelves a bit, here is the Death/Scent reading list. Some of them are staples of both olfactive and death literature, others are weird and wonderful deep cuts. This... Continue Reading →
This post is part of an ongoing series on fragrance in Ancient Egypt. Find out more about the sacred business of Egyptian perfume-making in Part I and how mummies ended up in magic incense in Part II. As a society, we have an anosmic view of history. We don't think about the way things smelt or... Continue Reading →
This is the second post in DS&LG's Women's History Month series, The Lost History of Women in Chemistry, to see Part I: The First Perfumer click here In the Indie perfume universe, the word alchemy pops up a lot. It graces the title of several popular companies. It also tends to be the word we... Continue Reading →
Today is International Women's Day, and all of March is Women's History Month in the US, so I thought it would be a splendid time to talk about the lost history of women in the sciences, specifically in chemistry and perfume. Perhaps lost isn't the right word. We didn't lose most of these incredible women,... Continue Reading →
To the modern Westerner, incense is the friend of the pothead teenager and long-time companion of the hippy. Incense is perhaps the oldest form of human scent manufacturing, however. With a documented history of over 7,000 years, we were making this stuff for 3,000 years before we finally got around to domesticating the cat. Those scented... Continue Reading →
There is no perfume culture with more mystery or confusion than that of the ancient Egyptians. Their perfume production wasn't the oldest in the world nor the most sophisticated, yet the mystique of Egypt drips with fragrance. Perhaps it was because perfume and cosmetics played such a vital role in everyday life. The popular image of the... Continue Reading →
History and Alchemy is devoted to the myth and history of scent production. We'll explore how rare and beautiful scents became commodities, grave goods, and items of legend. The first post in this section will appear tomorrow which is based on the events depicted above. Any guesses as to what is brewing?
