#IncredibleIndia #History #Heritage #Thread 👇
1/ If you wish you could capture the wonderful scent of wet earth into a bottle, Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh made that possible a long time ago.
1/ If you wish you could capture the wonderful scent of wet earth into a bottle, Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh made that possible a long time ago.
2/ Sometime in the past, the legendary perfumers of ancient Kannauj created a unique scent that would capture the fragrance of earth when first touched by the monsoon rains. Extracted from parched clay and distilled with ancient techniques, it is today known as mitti attar.
3/ Also called itr-e-khaki, mitti attar is made even today in Kannauj’s traditional perfumeries, where sinewy craftsmen tend to fires under ageing copper cauldrons or degs to make this remarkable perfume.
4/ The distillation process, called deg bhapka, is painstakingly slow and long, with no trace of industrial machinery or modernity.
The copper deg is built atop its own fireplace and has its own trough of water.
The copper deg is built atop its own fireplace and has its own trough of water.
5/ It is connected to a bulbous condenser called bhapka, which receives the fragrant liquid after distillation.
Little clay shards are made in neighbouring villages before they are sun baked and placed in the degs.
Little clay shards are made in neighbouring villages before they are sun baked and placed in the degs.
6/ The craftsmen put these shards of half-baked clay (instead of vetiver roots and flower petals) into the deg, cover them with water, hammer a lid down on top, and seal it with mud.
7/ They light a wood or cow-dung fire underneath, before filling the bhapka with sandalwood oil and sinking it into the water trough. The deg-bhapka are connected with a hollow bamboo pipe that carries the heady vapours from the simmering pot into the receiver.
8/ There it mixes with the sandalwood oil base. Every few hours, the receiver is switched and the deg cooled down with wet cloths, to stop the condensation.
The perfumes were traditionally stored in camel-skin pockets but are now kept in leather bottles.
The perfumes were traditionally stored in camel-skin pockets but are now kept in leather bottles.
9/ The fragrant essential oil trapped in the sandalwood oil base, contained in these leather bottle or kuppis, is placed in the sun to allow the excess water to evaporate & for the true scent of attar to develop – warm, organic & mineral-rich.
Read more: thebetterindia.com/59606/scent-ra…
Read more: thebetterindia.com/59606/scent-ra…
