![]() ![]() As if those ancient musk grains had been crushed into the soil and baked together, the mitti and musk have become one. So, you’re not getting a whiff of musk from the mitti, like you’d expect had you just added some grains. To make Musk Mitti meant I painstakingly boiled raw Tibetan musk pods inside the mitti itself – non-stop – for months. ![]() Sandalwood’s inherently calming properties mimic, even enhance mitti’s own soothing aroma, acting like an exalting carrier instead of a mute one like you’d get from plain alcohol tinctures.īut there’s something you can do to make mitti even more primal…Īdd musk to the attar, and it’s like you made the earthy profile even more so – plus, musk glazes the rainy soil scent with a sweetened aroma that makes wearing the infusion more addictive. What looks like flatbread rolled from topsoil harvested in India (preferably outside of monsoon season), these clay disks are distilled to literally capture the scent of earth and rain.Ĭost depends on the carrier – traditionally, the carrier of choice is sandalwood. It’s topsoil that’s been baked inside an earthen kiln sealed with earth, which is then hydro-distilled, usually into an oil that forms the base of the attar. Oud has notes of petrichor, and certain Papuan ouds especially capture those notes beautifully – but also add to it. Think earthy, herbaceous, out by the river. Every few hours, the receiver is switched and the deg cooled down with wet cloths, to stop the condensation.The smell of rain, petrichor, calm and fresh – but not citrus fresh. The deg and bhapka are connected with a hollow bamboo pipe that carries the heady vapours from the simmering pot into the receiver, where it mixes with the sandalwood oil base. They light a wood or cow-dung fire underneath, before filling the bhapka with sandalwood oil and sinking it into the water trough. The craftsmen put these shards of half-baked clay (instead of vetiver roots and flower petals) into the deg, cover them with water, hammer a lid down on top, and seal it with mud. Little clay shards are made in neighbouring villages before they are sun baked and placed in the degs. ![]() It is connected to a bulbous condenser called bhapka, which receives the fragrant liquid after distillation. The copper deg is built atop its own fireplace and has its own trough of water. The distillation process, called deg bhapka, is painstakingly slow and long, with no trace of industrial machinery or modernity. Mitti attar is made even today in Kannauj’s traditional perfumeries, where sinewy craftsmen tend to fires under ageing copper cauldrons or degs to make this remarkable perfume. The man, who was from Kannauj, figured that the oil was accidentally produced when rose petals came in contact with warm water, and presumably devised the steam-and-condense process to extract it. This is how it goes: A servant at Jahangir’s palace in Agra noticed some drops of rose oil floating on the surface of Noor Jehan’s bathing pool. ![]() There is a legend in the historical biography of Akbar, Ain-I-Akbari, written by Abul Fazl, about how the city’s perfume industry started. The perfumers of Kannauj also made the scented oils Mughal Emperors were so immensely fond of. Situated on the historical scent trade route that brought perfumes from India to the Middle East, Kannauj’s perfumeries were famed for their magnificent attars. The fragrant credentials of this city, known as the ‘Grasse of the East’ and ‘India’s Perfume Capital’, are age old. The perfume of petrichor is distilled into miniature glass vials at Kannauj, a small town on the banks of river Ganga that has been guarding the secret of traditional Indian perfumes for centuries. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |