Women

  • Gardens of Adonis: Women, Death, & the Senses

    Every summer in ancient Athens, strange gardens emerged in courtyards and on rooftops. Seedlings were precariously sown into handfuls of soil within clusters of broken pottery. These impromptu micro gardens were lovingly tended for several weeks, yet they were created to be infertile and die. Long before they could bear fruit, the seedlings would wither

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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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  • The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: The First Alchemist

    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 use once words fail to describe the process of turning disparate ingredients into something more than the sum of their parts, something magical. As Clarke’s Third Law states:

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  • The Lost History of Women in Chemistry:The First Perfumer

    This post is no longer available click here to redirect to Tapputi Bellatekallim: The First Perfumer? Author’s Note: In 2016 I wrote the post, The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: The First Perfumer. In the interim, my knowledge of Assyriology and Mesopotamian olfactory history has grown, and I no longer agree with how I

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