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Utterly Unique Attar

Utterly Unique Attar

Utterly Unique Attar
There is sacredness in wearing precious perfume and everything about attar captures the essence of this very human ritual. The attar is one of the first forms of perfume to come into being thousands of years ago and embodies an ancestral tradition full of majesty and mystery. Historically, attars were bold aromatic compositions made of particularly exquisite and valuable botanicals. Attar was not complex perfumery, yet it was built around the intrinsic complexities of only a few potent keynotes that expressed their authentic, raw personality. Fortunately, today we can still make beautiful attar simply and naturally and pay homage to this exceptional art. 

Symbol of spiritual value
Attar is a type of oil based perfume or aromatic extract that is derived from prized botanical sources and treasured as a symbol of spiritual value. To wear attar played a significant role in religious ceremonies, cultural rituals and as a symbol of luxury and refinement. Nothing brings to life the sense of the Divine as beautifully and vividly as a pleasing perfume.

India and more specifically, the Indus valley was the first place to make and use the attar and this age-old tradition spread to Mesopotamia and the Middle East where it was to become an integral part of cultural and spiritual practice. These concentrated perfumes are still popular in India and the middle Eastern countries; Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and even countries close to home such as Indonesia and Malaysia. In South Asia, attars had become nearly extinct when the popularity of Western fragrances overshadowed them as tastes changed.

It is believed that the word attar is a derivative of sugandha, a Sanskrit term which means “aromatic”. The Persian word for attar is “Itir” (also written atr) meaning "to smell sweet." There are variations between attars and the term means different things depending on the part of the world in which it is used. In India, attar is very specific: it’s the result of painstakingly steam-distilling precious flowers and into a base of sandalwood oil. 

Attar is no ordinary perfume
These days a natural plant based perfume would contain essential oils dissolved in alcohol or some kind of vegetable oil. Attar on the other hand contains just the pure floral essential oil either from the single species of the flower or sometimes from a few and it is most often blended into the woody base of pure sandalwood oil. Sandalwood, it turns out, has a practical use beyond its intoxicating aroma. It acts as a fine fixative to help slow down the dispersal of the other aromatics in the blend so that we can smell it for longer. It provides the grounding base that captures and retains the more fleeting notes, so that the multi-nuanced scent of rose, for instance, continues to bloom, unfolding steadily rather than flashing away.

Attar is an intense experience
The concentrated nature of attar is because it is undiluted, pure flower essential oils that are distilled with or mixed into pure sandalwood oil, valuable oil itself to use as a base. Accordingly, true attar is incredibly intense with an enduring presence on the skin, a single drop is enough to last a day or even for longer. Technically, every perfumed oil is not attar because diluting rare prized florals in a vegetable carrier oil might make it more affordable, but dilutes the whole intense nature of how an attar ought to be experienced.

It is a bit of an anomaly that despite being highly fragrant, most flowers like rose or jasmine actually yield very little volatile oil. It requires massive amounts of handpicked flowers to extract these floral essential oils by distillation and it is a meticulous, protracted process that produces very little end product. This is why attars are so expensive to buy because of the extensive resource, labour, timing and skill necessary to make them.

Only the real thing will do
Usually, such delicate florals are made by solvent extraction to make an absolute, a process that yields a bigger amount of floral essence. Absolutes from flowers are certainly beautiful extracts, but the distilled oil from scented florals is truly exquisite and displays a different olfactory profile that expands perfume-making possibilities. 

Today, true and pure attar is quite difficult to find, considering there are multitudes of fake, sickly sweet attars available to buy online today at ridiculously low prices that defy the true cost of this precious perfume. Just try Indiamart or other spuriously cheap outlets if you don’t mind synthetic imitations that merely mimic attar and pale in contrast to the real thing in all its aromatic profundity.
The Ancient Attar Process
The method of making attar with no electricity or heavy machinery has hardly changed since its beginnings; it is called degh-bhapka in Hindi, and is still used in Kannaug, Uttar Pradesh. This artisanal process uses copper pots that the perfumers heat with wood and cow dung. Bulk flowers such as rose, tuberose, jasmine, champa, frangipani etc., are put into the copper pot the “degh” and covered with water. Once this pot or vat is closed, it is sealed with cotton and clay on the edges, which hardens and becomes airtight during the process.
 

Now, the water is boiled with the flowers. The steam starts to rise and is collected through a bamboo rod. This odour-laden steam is deposited in another copper tank, called a "bhapka" that contains the sandalwood oil, which absorbs the wonderful odoriferous steam and becomes attar.
This process usually takes about ten hours and is often repeated for several days with fresh plants to reach the required concentration. The attar is then saved in camel skin bottles for a few days to ferment, which removes all the humidity. To maintain the mystery, the exact formula of each attar is kept secret and is passed on from generation to generation. 

Integral to Cultural Heritage 
The magical perfumed attar was always popular amongst the elite and wealthy class, specifically kings and queens. Attar was also a ubiquitous presence in many Hindu temples in India and Middle Eastern Mosques. Rose was the quintessential and coveted attar that is still made to this day by specialised artisans in parts of Northern India, a land redolent with aromatic plants. The rose has long held an exalted place in India’s rich aromatic traditions and distinguished as the Divine flower of love. Certain other precious florals, such as lotus, jasmine, tuberose or champaka that feature strongly in the cultural and religious lives of the Indian people are also meticulously made into attar. It is certain that this deep inner connection with the plants plays an important role in the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of the people and this in turn benefits their physical health. 

The Indian perfumery town Kannauj defines attar as its art, culture and heritage. Kannauj is to India what Grasse is to France, but with a perfumery tradition far more ancient. It is here along with other towns: Jaunpur and Ghazipur that the industry took its root. In the Middle East, attar culture is a thriving, living history that is a treasured part of everyday life. For hundreds of years, attars were considered in some societies, mainly in Islamic cultural folk to be something that attracted angels and warded off evil spirits. Sufi saints and spiritual aspirants would adorn themselves with these scents to assist them in their journey towards enlightenment. In the Middle East, the definition of attar is not so specific and refers to a mix of pure perfume oils. Historically, in the Arab world, even animal extracts like civet, musk, deer or ambergris along with oud wood and amber were highly sought after in attar formats.

Not a drop to waste
True concentrated attar is not sprayed and most often sold in a dainty bottle or flacon because one precious drop goes such a long way.  Attar is carefully dabbed onto pulse points so that body warmth organically spreads the scent, mingled with pheromonal humanness to create a personalised fragrant aura that emanates from the body.  Threads of heady floral scent exude forth with every heartbeat, like fragrant secrets whispered to those blessed to be allowed close. We wear most perfumes for the world, but attars are for our inner circle. This secreted aroma signals to the heavens that one is sanctified and ready for spiritual observance or more earthily, that one amorously beckons romantic attention. Most importantly it allows the wearer to privately revel in the scented sanctuary of the body as a sacred vessel for Divine Consciousness.

Tinderbox Damask Rose attar
Tinderbox Damask Rose attar is a modern take on the ancient attar perfume using only the most valuable, costly rose extracts namely rose essential oils and absolutes and adding them to the fine base of pure sandalwood oil. In this way, we honour the seminal olfactory influences of the traditional culture that developed the attar and celebrate the pure and beautiful nature of this aromatic expression available to us today. 

The pairing of rose and sandalwood is together Divine and jubilant, both are profoundly spiritual oils that have been used throughout the ages as sacred offerings to God. Bold, regal rose is cradled, embraced and grounded in wise and woody sandalwood to create a beautiful blend of earth and flower that somehow encapsulates both masculine and feminine all in one distinct blend. 

The magisterial aroma of rose washes away worries to uplift us from the dreary doldrums of depression while it also lets the innate light of the heart engulf us. Rose in its purest form is revelationary, revealing to us the supreme inner contentedness that is the very heart of who we are. Inhaling pure rose prompts the heart to release lingering, unprocessed emotions that lurk so that we might feel them more deeply. In this way we liberate the heart from heaviness and sadness, clearing the way for intrinsic Joy to seep throughout our cells and become our modus operandi in the world. 

Moreover, both rose and sandalwood evoke erotic passion that opens our hearts to the corporal expression of love, elevating the physical union of bodies to soul-merging spiritual experience. To wear rose attar honours the Divinity of the scent and honours the body as a sacred temple of the soul.

Tinderbox Damask Rose Attar

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