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Powder Incense Burners & Holders

A collection of power incense burners and related tools for burning incense powder.

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A step-by-step guide to creating an incense seal

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What is powder incense? What is powder incense made of?

Incense powder or powder incense is essentially fragrant, dried natural ingredients that have been ground into powder. The ingredients are mostly plant matter such as woods, flowers, herbs and resins. Some common ingredients you might be familiar with are sandalwood, lavender, cinnamon and frankincense. In fact, if you keep powdered spices for cooking, many of these (if not all) can be considered incense powder.

The same types of powders are used to make incense sticks or cones. The key difference between incense powder that is directly burnt and incense powder used to make sticks or cones is that a binding agent is needed for the latter (in Chinese or Japanese incense the binding agent is nanmu or tabu noki).

Powder incense can be single ingredient (eg, sandalwood powder), or a blend.

What is the difference between incense sticks and powder?

The difference between incense sticks and powder is like the difference between dried dough and flour. Incense powder is loose powder (like flour), which can be combined with water and a binder to form dough. If the dough is formed into sticks, the dried dough sticks are essentially incense sticks.

Can you burn incense powder?

Incense powder can be directly burnt. The most common method is to form a pattern or trail on an inflammable surface, then lighting the trail. For more details on how to form incense trails, please refer to the question below.

How do you burn loose incense powder?

This practice of burning loose incense powder is called zhuan xiang (篆香) or yin xiang (印香) in Chinese, and began in the Middle Ages in China, the Tang dynasty (618-907). It gained popularity in the subsequent Song dynasty (960-1279), and is still practiced today.

There are two elements to burning incense powder. The first is to prepare and flatten an ash bed, and the second is to create an incense seal (also known as stamp or trail) on the ash bed for burning.

To prepare the ash bed, loose ash in an incense burner is stirred with chopsticks, then pressed and flattened using an incense press. An incense stamp mold is then placed onto the bed, and loose incense powder scooped into the mold. An incense spatula is used to spread the incense powder evenly throughout the mold. The mold is then gently lifted, leaving the incense stamp made of powder behind. This can then be lit on one end.

For a more detailed step-by-step guide with video instructions, please refer to this article.  

What tools are needed for burning incense powder?

To burn incense powder, you will need a wide-mouthed incense burner, an incense mold, some ash and incense powder. We also recommend the following 5 tools:

 

Chopsticks: Used for stirring the ash

Ash press (香压): Used for pressing and smoothing the ash 

Incense spoon (香勺): Used for spooning incense powder onto the mold

Incense spatula (香铲): Used for distributing the incense powder evenly into the mold and removing excess powder

Incense sweeper (香扫): Used for sweeping loose ash or incense powder from the edge of the incense burner

How can I buy a Chinese incense burner kit or powder incense burner kit?

At Kin Objects, we have a curated collection of items you can purchase to create your own powder incense burner kit. If you are starting from scratch, we recommend you purchase the following three items:

  1. An incense burner from our powder incense collection (each comes with an incense mold to get you started), please note backflow or stick incense burners will not work
  2. An ash and incense powder set
  3. A set of tools

 

If you already own one or more of these items, you just need to top up what you are missing. For example, if you already have ash and incense powder, then simply purchase a burner and some tools.  

What's the best way to light the incense trails?

It can be quite difficult to light the incense seal with a regular lighter, so if you are having trouble, try a small stove lighter or kitchen torch, or any lighting device with a long-ish snout for the flame. Alternatively, if you have an incense stick handy, use this. Simply light the tip of the incense, don't fan out the flame, and use this flame to light the start of the incense powder trail.

Why won't my incense powder burn from beginning to end?

This is a common problem, especially when first starting. When we make the incense powder pattern, sometimes we end up with less powder in parts of the design, especially in parts that bend and twist. These parts cause the burning to stop. This improves with practice. As you make more and more incense seals, the amount of powder through all parts of the design will become more even. And you'll get a better handle for how best to pack the powder (not too loose, not too dense). As this happens, the burn should continue for longer and longer.

 

Even after practice, it is not unusual for the burning to stop a few times for designs that have multiple bends. This is not all bad - as an incense seal can often burn for a very long time (an hour or more), sometimes we like the natural stop. Just come back the next day and light up the rest to enjoy.

Related Articles from the Blog

In this article, we explore some more creative methods of working with ash and incense powder, methods such as creating incense mountains with ash, or drawing letters with the powder.

 

Besides what we create in this article, there are many, many other formations you can create...

 

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Burning incense powder refers to the traditional Chinese practice of zhuan xiang (篆香 ) or yin xiang

(印香), which literally translates into creating an incense seal or incense stamp from incense powder.

There are two key elements to burn powder incense, each requiring some patience and practice to master, we'll explain each in depth in this article...

 

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Liuli (琉璃, or 瑠璃) is a form of glass art which involves a multi-step lost-wax casting process, the same process used for casting bronze statues. This is a costly and time consuming process that allows artisans to create pieces which are more intricate and elaborate than is normally possible with glass. We have recently added a seletion of Liuli pieces into our collection of incense burners, and introduce this technique in more detail in this article...

 

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