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Palace Rituals - Incense sticks

Palace Rituals |宫中香  A Re-interpreted Blend

Incense was an integral part of Chinese palace life up until the 19th century. Men used incense to aid them in reading, composing poetry, and conducting official business; women used incense as they played music, sang, painted, and conducted “unofficial” business behind-the-scenes. Both carried incense balls on their waists, and had an incense holder permanently lit in their quarters.

This blend is derived from one of the various palace incense recipes recorded in History of Incense《香乘》. It has a base of sandalwood and aloeswood, a rich overlay of native Chinese roots and flowers, rounded off with musk grass and unguis odoratus – the powder of a marine shell dating back to Babylonian incense recipes.

The result is a distinctive warm, earthy scent with a cool, sweet tinge, luring you slowly yet surely into its embrace.

Please find the Palace Rituals incense cones in a separate listing here.

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Palace Rituals is part of the Kin Premium Collection, a collection of incense exclusively hand-made in small scale studios including our own. All incense in the Premium incense collection are enclosed in Wutong wood boxes painted with traditional Chinese red ink.

Full length: 21cm | 8.25 inches

(60-70min burn time/stick, total 20+ hours for 20 sticks, 50+ hours for 50 sticks)

Half length: 10.5cm | 4.125 inches

(30-35min burn time/stick, total 10+ hours for 20 sticks, 25+ hours for 50 sticks)

Ingredients:Sandalwood, Aloeswood, Tonka Bean, Chinese Nardostachys Root and Rhizome, Citronella, Sticky Germander, Unguis Odoratus, Camphor, Musk Grass, Nanmu

All stick incense are enclosed in a glass tube and a Wutong box. Wutong is a type of wood popular for storing incense in East Asia due to its superior anti-mold and anti-moisture properties.

Please note that as every piece is handmade, the size, shape and color will have irregularities depending on the batch. These are a part of the handmade process and not considered defects.

Over time, we may continue to tweak the blend as we are continually searching for better ingredients, and improvements to our processes.

Customer Reviews

Based on 27 reviews
85%
(23)
7%
(2)
0%
(0)
4%
(1)
4%
(1)
Y
Yuting Yin
Great Incense

This is by far my favorite place to buy incense. They are so slim and natural that no other chemical incense matches its quality. I also love that these objects are so thoughtfully crafted connecting with traditions!

A
Amanda Wu

Gorgeous smells that settle into a room kind of nicely. You have to be careful with the incense sticks since they're delicate but they are packaged so thoughtfully - made me wiish i was giving this away as a gift!

P
Psi Vinio
2 wood incense

Nice and I have to try it a few more times to really understand it

J
Jan Potgieter
Thank you for the beautiful scents.

I am enjoying the scents you put together and will continue to do so. The packaging also makes it extra special and respectful, not just for the receiver, but also towards the hands that put it all together. Thank you again!

S
Salam Alhamdy
Beautiful design flawed execution

I love the design and color. The incense is ok. It smells average and does not fill a room like many more incense brands I’ve tried. The biggest let down is the incense holder - the brass ball can’t hold anything more than a light small incense stick, otherwise it falls. So anything you buy from anywhere else will likely not work. A shame because I wanted this to be the center piece of my dining table.

Hi Salam - thank you very much for taking the time to review our products. We appreciate the feedback on the incense, and would just like to caution you that all natural incense will smell gentle compared with artifical scents, especially at the same price point. Incense made with essential oils will also smell strong in comparison to those made only from ground powders - although high quality essential oils are also costly (eg, the cost of high quality sandalwood essential oil alone is high), and those with good oils should not be available at a cheap price. We would ask you to bear these in mind when you make comparisons. Unfortunately, based on our experience in purchasing incense from the market to do research, 95% off what is available contains artificial ingredients or questionable essential oils.
Thank you also for the feedback on the incense holder's balls, this is a limitation of this incense holder, which we write in the product description. We will try to make this more obvious to customers going forward.

Behind-the-scenes in our studio -

The making of all natural incense sticks for the Kin Premium Collection

The Kin Premium Incense Collection

A Collection of Handmade, All Natural Incense

The Kin Premium Incense collection is a collection of premium incense exclusively hand-made in small scale studios. Part of the collection is from our own studio, the remainder is hand-selected from experienced Chinese artisans that we know and trust.

Like all of our products, the Premium Incense collection is rooted in thousands of years of traditional Chinese incense culture. Part of the collection closely follows traditional recipes from the archetypal Chinese incense book History of Incense《香乘》, written almost 500 years ago in the Yuan dynasty; these we call the Re-interpreted blends. Part of the collection are our own creations, using ingredients and blends with modern, non-Chinese influences – these we call the Imagined blends. There is also a focus on precious single scents like aloeswood (otherwise known as agarwood, oud or jinkoh) – these we call the Classic single scents.  

The Perfect Accompaniment for Daily Rituals

The Kin Premium Incense collection contains no artificial ingredients or enhancements. They are made from all natural, hand-selected ingredients, chosen because they were the absolute best we could find at reasonable prices.

The binding powder used is Indonesian nanmu powder, a wood-based binder popular in Chinese incense, and where the Japanese makko or tabu no ki powder derives from.

All of the Kin Premium Incense are carefully enclosed in Wutong wood boxes painted with traditional Chinese red ink. Wutong is a type of wood popular for storing incense in East Asia, due to its superior anti-mold and anti-moisture properties.

Indulge in a stick of natural incense, gift yourself a moment of calm.

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