If you are into scenting your home and have more scented candles than Jo Malone (ahem, me) then listen up. Incense is the future; posh incense, not those Nag Champa sticks you’ve still got left over from your student days or your children use to remove the smell of other botanical burnings.
While interviewing industry insiders for We Wear Perfume, it’s clear that home scenting (a massively growing market) is about to get much more decorative, as brands realise we all want our scent dispensers to look as good as they smell. Decorative dispensing is something Italian brand Fornasetti do well, in fact its beautiful ceramic candle pots and scent spheres are possible the most elegant on the market.
Now it has upped the game on incense (which it has produced in more traditional flavours for a while) with a beautifully decorative Incense gift box, which contains a ceramic incense dispenser and a box of incense in either the Ortensia or Flora scents.
Making a floral incense is tough, as it is very hard to capture the delicate floral scent in the incense wood, so Fornasetti worked with Japanese supplier Nipon Kodo to create Ortensia and Flora. Cheaper incense (your Nag Champras) uses a lot of heavy amber/patchouli/woody notes to disguise the smell of the glue used to keep the incense wood attached to the stick’s core, florals are rarely used as it’s hard to create a quality one.
I’ve been burning Ortensia for a week now and its rosy floral notes are light and soft yet distinctly incense-y. The ceramic box stylishly stores the sticks and also has a hole in the design to accommodate burning. Incense is practical as a home scent too as it doesn’t need to be blown out when you leave the house and you can make your room smell good very quickly, much faster than candles. You can also break the sticks in half for a shorter burn time and ration your stock. Honestly, it’s the future, I’m telling you.
Fornasetti candles, spheres and incense are available here. The new floral incenses are expected soon.
