Making Scents

Incense Smoking Robot

Robots. Is there anything they can't do?

It's The Incense Smoking Robot, available from General Robots.

The Aloeswood Statues of Thien Vuong Co Sat Pagoda

At the Thien Vuong Co Sat Pagoda in Dalat, Vietnam ("The City of Thousands of Flowers") can be found three Buddhas statues carved of aloeswood (the aromatic wood found in the finest Japanese incense). Each figure reportedly stands about 4 meters tall and weighs 1.5 tons. Impressive!

  

Lobby ambience

We recently updated the look of our Boulder lobby/incense showroom with a flock of spiffy new Japanese paper lanterns, new framed art and some comfy seating. A few pictures of our makeover:

 The lanterns are especially atmospheric after sunset.

Have a seat and enjoy the melange of subtle incense fragrances permeating our lobby while you're waiting for your order!

At the Crossroads of History: The Incense Road

The fabled Incense Road, the ancient aromatics trade route that stretched between India and the Mediterranean (and with many way-points throughout the Arabian peninsula), has long been shrouded in mystery. Yet as new discoveries are made, greater insight is gained into the millennia-old "life and times" of this dusty overland route.

One new insight was announced earlier this month by Israeli archeologists studying geopolitical boundaries of more than 2,000 years ago along the Mediterranean segment of the Incense Road. Their findings indicate that peoples of the time used the road as a means of establishing control over the nearby Negev desert lands.

According to the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), the Hasmoneans (the 100-year-old dynasty of an independent Jewish state known as the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel) built a fortress, called Horvat Ma'agurah, along the Incense Road between Petra (seen below) and Gaza. The purpose of this fortress is believed to have been a means by which the Hasmoneans could keep its enemies out of Negev.

Petra 

The peoples most adversely affected by this measure were the Nabateans, an oasis-dwelling Arabic people who preferred the myrhh, frankincense and spice trades to their more agriculturally inclined neighbors. The Nabateans' own contributions to history are great: their invention of a North Arabic script would eventually became Modern Arabic script.

If you are an enthusiast for history, maps, incense and textiles, or some intersection thereof, this all makes for very illuminating and entertaining reading. Click any of the links above to learn more about this aspect of the Incense Road and for additional details about the IAA's findings. The Nabatean site is especially rich with images and documents, and even provides details about that other storied aromatics trade route, the Incense Sea Route.

The Incense is Placed on the Tree with Great Care ...

Our friends in the Healthy Living Dept. of the Central Market in San Antonio, TX have been using the colorful packaging of Shoyeido's Jewel Series incense as Christmas tree ornaments. We love it ... we just wish we'd thought of it first!

Hey, is that a bunny rabbit? Look at that cute little fluffy bunny rabbit in the tree!