A sample of Amber Gold by the New Oriental Agarbatti Co, better known simply as Oriental - the incense house founded by Attar Syed Rahman Hussain / Attar Khasim Saheb, the businessman, along with Mr. T. L. Upadycya, who created the bamboo-core agarbatti, and so started the joss-stick revolution. This "new" company was founded in 1890 and is the oldest incense house in the world to make agarbatti.
This Amber Gold has a heady fragrance on the stick, quite volatile and alcoholic, though rich with bakhoor scents drizzled with mint and citrus. A powerful and arresting accord that is compelling and troubling at the same time. I love it! This stick does lean strongly in the area of Fluxo/Flora style incense - oil rich and heady incense that is so intense it is loud and colourful and somewhat crude and vulgar. This is not a sleek black panther elegantly slinking along ornamented with a single precious pearl, this is a monumental elephant proudly swaggering along dressed in rich tapestries and bells, and surrounded by howling dervishes and musicians blowing trumpets and banging drums. I like Flora style incenses, though their brashness can be challenging. They are very Indian, and tend to perform best in lots of space and air. And I think they are designed for hotter ambient temperatures, where the scents will tend to evaporate more quickly, so more weight is put on them to linger. Here in the UK, our ambient temperature is such that the scent, especially the top notes, lasts longer, and so there is a build up of greater intensity than possibly intended, and a greater clash between the top and base notes. Flora style incense, such as this Amber Gold, are probably best burned outdoors on a hot sunny day to really appreciate and understand them.
The scent on the burn pretty much follows the experience of approaching the scent on the stick. It has the rich, slightly sharp, alcoholic tones, the grounding in bakhoor, the mint and citrus notes, along with chocolate and dark red wine. This is a robust and exciting scent, and I love it. Yes, it is emphatic and somewhat thunderous like a trumpeting behemoth. Yes, it lacks elegance. But sometimes an assertive beast of a scent is just what I want. And there are some delicate moments around the heart of this accord to give balance and interest. Grrrr. Damn good.
Its a shame that Scenting Secrets dont ship to the UK (I asked them) - I'd love to try this brand!
ReplyDeleteJulian of The Incense Atelier, the chap who sent me the samples, says he will be selling Oriental around December/January. He's selling incense via eBay at the moment, though will shortly have his own website.
DeleteOriental take a moment or two to get used to. But the incenses seem to reward the patience to try again. And they are such an historic incense house. Worth exploring I think.
Oh, that's good news! I just looked him up on Ebay and noticed he had a few Ramakrishna varieties that I've yet to try - so I placed my first order - lovely!
ReplyDeleteCool. His intention is to be straight, honest, and up front. No rebadging. And no silly inflated prices. I hope he does well.
DeleteI hope he does too - seems in just this last year alone a lot of harder to source incenses are now easily available in the UK.. Well done everybody!!
DeleteYeah. There's a lot of interesting things happening in incense, with makers popping up all over the place - Yemen, Germany, Israel, Egypt, etc, and resin-on-a-stick type incense really becoming the way forward. Things have really moved on in the ten years since I've been doing this blog, and the incense world is looking very exciting and vibrant.
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