Silver Olibanum — silver frankincense

Sep 2

4 min read

Updated: Oct 16

Chilini Private

He was on his knees between the beds, pulling up mint that had crept under the plum tree again. The knees of his trousers soaked through at once: the earth was cold after the rain, and the stems snapped right at the root, leaving green sap on his fingers. The plum grew on the neighbour's side, but half its branches had long hung over his garden, and every August he gathered the windfalls into two buckets, one for himself and one for across the boundary.

That afternoon there had been a conversation that could easily have turned into a quarrel. The neighbour came with a tape measure and a bundle of pegs, walked along the boundary and drove the pegs in with his heel, one after another. He wanted a solid fence as tall as a man. The branches would have to be sawn off, he said, and the rosemary by the gate would have to go too, it was in the way of the posts. He spoke loudly, with a grievance he must have been saving up since spring, and the tape in his hand kept sliding out and snapping back in.

Since morning he had been wearing Silver Olibanum, on the wrists and the neck, out of an old habit. The neighbour stepped almost chest to chest to show him the line from peg to peg, and suddenly stopped mid-sentence. He sniffed. "What's that on you? Some herb. And resin." He shrugged and nodded at the thyme under the window.

He did not take up the quarrel. He heard him out to the end. He kept to his own. All he said was that he had planted the rosemary himself, from a cutting in a jar of water, and that he would keep carrying the windfalls over as before. The neighbour wound up the tape, stood a while looking at the plum tree, then pulled the last peg out of the ground and walked off with it in his fist.

In the evening the window stood open to the garden. He set a clay cup of sand on the sill, laid two pale tears of resin on a small coal and dropped a pinch of dry thyme on top. At first the resin hissed and bubbled, then turned faintly sweet, and the wood of the sill under the cup gave back the day's warmth. A thin ribbon rose slowly and turned grey near the top of the frame.

His knees ached from the beds. He laid his palms on the warm wood and sat like that until a light came on in the neighbour's house across the boundary. Through the plum branches he could see the man moving about his kitchen. His sleeve smelled of the same thing as the cup: herbs, pepper, pale resin, and by now there was no telling where one ended and the other began.

By night the garden had gone dark. There was one peg fewer along the boundary. The haze had settled on the wood of the windowsill.

Made to strengthen the spirit.

How it wears

Black cumin rises first. Its seeds, rubbed between the fingers, smell oily and bitter, and pepper gives the nose a quick sting right after. Thyme and rosemary bring with them a garden bed that has lain in the sun all day.

Then frankincense walks into the herbs. The pale resin opens slowly and dryly, with a lemony dust along its edge, and the black cumin sinks inside it as a dark thread. Wormwood keeps the resin bitter and stops it from turning sugary.

Towards evening everything settles into warmth. Benzoin thickens on the skin like resin that has run down the bark and set. Sandalwood is smooth and milky, and until night it holds the smell of herbs, the way your palms do after work in the garden.

What sets it apart

It is an oriental spicy fragrance built on the idea of unity: herbs, spices, pale resin and wood sound together, and none of them puts out another. At its heart is black cumin oil, and good oil is hard to find, because so much of what is sold is diluted. Aromatic herb distillates, essential oils and balsams were added to it, and the composition was developed in several stages over more than a year. On Fragrantica its frankincense has been compared with Tauer, and its dry herbs with Amouage Sunshine Man. It suits a man and a woman equally well. It was made to strengthen the spirit, and people wear it on days when they need to keep a level voice and a straight back.

Notes

Top: black cumin, pepper, thyme, lemon balm, elecampane, angelica, ginger, rosemary, neroli, pelargonium, basil, bitter almond, white honey, bay laurel, petitgrain, sage.

Heart: artemisia, birch tar, clove, fir, nutmeg, cardamom, saffron, cinnamon, geranium, Damask rose, Moroccan rose, iris, jasmine, lavender, myrtle, caramel, resins, cashmere wood, tobacco, pine.

Base: patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, vetiver, agarwood, tonka bean, vanilla, benzoin, castoreum, styrax, leather, tolu balsam, musk, ambergris, oakmoss.