Lavander

  • The Fragrant Tomb of Lady Dai

    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…

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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…

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  • The Sketchy History of Four Thieves Oil

    The internet has a thing about salacious history. Give the crowd a good old-timey murder, and they will produce 150,000 blog posts and eight true crime podcasts devoted to telling you the real story. While I give them points for enthusiasm, these works often employ some very dodgy research methods. Copy-and-paste is in pretty heavy rotation. Researched and…

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  • 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…

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  • The Rise of Miasma

    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…

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  • A Murder Two Ways (Scent the Scene)

    History is painted by the winners, but what does it smell like?

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