A Living Composition
A single fragrant object that might remind us of the beauty in the ordinary and is made to last generations.
I often wonder ‘who was the first?’ about many things but I looked into the history of the traditional pomander and it made me wonder, who was the first person who decided to take a clove and press it into an orange?
Whoever it was (I imagine some gorgeous intentional person in a contemplative moment), their portable scent talisman changed the smell of European interiors for hundreds of years and … drumroll … inspired the House of DeuxPies’ first edition release.
Yes, finally. The public site and edition catalogue I said I had been working on is live. You can see this at House of DeuxPies.
The history of the pomander
The word pomander is derived from the French pomme d’ambre, where apple of amber began as medicine and referred to solid or compartmented balls. These were filled with fragrant substances like ambergris, musk, civet, resin and spices.
In a world that understood disease as bad air, these balls of aromatic materials held to the nose were both prophylactic and for prayer. Cardinals carried them on golden chains and plague doctors pressed them to their faces with the infamous bird-beak masks, which were essentially wearable pomanders stuffed with herbs and spices such as lavender, cloves, and camphor. Elizabeth I received one as a New Year’s gift and kept it close.
The smell was protection, status, and beauty all simultaneously. Protection came from the cloves, described even today as a powerful antioxidant and so the premise was the same.
The materials were not accessible to all, so by the sixteenth century an interpretation of the pomander was made as a domestic object using often a bitter orange and cloves.
You pressed the cloves in by hand, one by one, in a careful pattern. The orange dried and shrank around the cloves over weeks and months. The smell deepened and changed. What began as sharp citrus and fresh spice became something darker, more complex, more itself. A properly made pomander lasts decades. We are sure ours can last a lifetime with the natural preservation we have chosen. It was a 6-8 week process.
Then, quietly, it all disappeared, as synthetic air fresheners and the slow domestic art of scent, such as the kind that required patience and attention and the willingness to make something that would outlast one fashionable season, fell away.
What it says about now?
We’re always reading about ‘quiet forms of resistance’ being applied to emotions, but how about objects? In an age of mass production and fleeting trends, the traditional pomander feels fitting. It’s a 6-8 week process to make it by hand and it’s made to last for lifetimes.
I’m lucky to experience the fragrance from one that was gifted to me five years or so ago by my sister Clem and it still manages to remind me on the odd occasion, never when I ask, that it is in the room.
Launch of House of DeuxPies Edition 01
The traditional pomander is the first edition release available for pre-order. These are covered in warm resinous dried cloves from South-East Asia, gently macerated in beautiful Florentine iris for preservation along with spices, all sustainably sourced. In the spirit of trying to avoid having to scale fast we are limiting it to 30 pomanders and each will come with a certificate and instructions for care.
Some notes:
If you are a subscriber here we will give you free shipping and you can also pre-order by replying direct.
We are opening this quietly and would love your feedback as the first supporters. Do sign up to see the catalogue build at www.houseofdeuxpies.com and you’ll see the first drops.
Finally this substack was called House of DeuxPies but I have changed it to FragrancePhyto so I can talk more personally now the website is live while still representing the house.
Beautiful picture of Clemency!