Secrets can be ... seductive
- from the film Notes on a Scandal
Secrets of Scent Revealed through Textiles, Color, Food
The language of flowers and spices is spoken throughout cultures’ life and death passages, with variant uses in courting, grooming, anointing, pleasure, medicine, and within spiritual and sociological arenas.
Flowers and spices are included in pattern, are found in tombs, and with mummies. click here
They fragrance hats and baths, adorn necklines and icons, show status by the ear and in the hair, wrap the waist, present laurels, and are seen being given and received.
Scent includes the language of forests: wood, resins and animal products.
With technological advances we identify fragrant residues left within pomanders, vials, bottles and rings.
Snuff boxes, and their earlier equivalents, reveal not only tobacco leaf, but lavender, rose, and ingredients such as the medicinal, or shamanic, anadenanthera colubrina var. cebil (fabaceae).
Fabrics drape over incense burners throughout cultures and paintings.
Moth repellent scents of patchouli or vetiver were proof of authentic import in the profitable, early shawl trade.
photo: Train Nose Lura Astor excerpt from presentation
