The English word “incense” derives from the Latin word for “to burn”, incendēre. So in its most basic sense (no pun intended), incense is just different plant materials (or in a small number of instances, animal matter) that are burnt for their fragrant smells. This includes a variety of woods, resins, seeds, roots, leaves, flowers and some animal materials like musk (secretion of the musk deer) or amber gris (best explained as “whale vomit”). In ancient and medieval times, incense tended to be burnt in its raw form, eg, pieces of wood, or a mixture of wood, leaves, roots etc.

Incense today tends to be in the form of pastes or powders, made into shapes like sticks. The pastes or powders are made from a mixture of the types of ingredients mentioned above, ground into fine powder, and bound with a binding agent with water. The incense stick (or whatever other shape its in) can then be directly lit.

Incense was a huge part of life in the ancient and medieval world. In medieval China, incense accompanied every aspect of life for intellectuals, officials, and the imperial family. They would wear incense in pouches on their belts, fan themselves with incense fans, dry their clothes over large incense burners, bathe in incense-infused water and wear incense-infused make up… not to mention have a lit incense burner in every room. It was believed that incense not only made life more pleasant, but it had significant health benefits and helped with focus and relaxation.

Today, incense is making a “come back” into our daily lives for the same reasons. Many people light an incense to accompany meditation, yoga, reading, or some quiet work time. Incense has also retained its use in religious and ancestral ceremonies all around the world, and you might often see them in large temples, shrines, as well as homes of friends who retain a small shrine.

Lighting an incense stick is not difficult even if you've never done it before. You light the tip of the incense with a flame until it catches fire, allow it to burn for a few seconds, then gently fan out the flame, ensuring that a glowing ember remains. This may need to be repeated several times if the first time doesn’t work. You can watch the video at the top of this page showing the process, or refer to this step-by-step article to guide you.

Once properly lit, place the incense onto the incense holder. Keep the incense and burner on a surface away from wind or sudden air movements (windows, fans, AC, etc).

While most people on the internet would say good quality = 100% natural, we believe it should go beyond that. It is very simplistic to boil quality down to just this one thing – for example, if we randomly throw together a bunch of herbs and spices from the kitchen cabinet, and heat this mixture up with charcoal, would we consider this good quality incense? It’s certainly 100% natural.

All natural should absolutely be the foundations of a good quality incense, and you should check this carefully. However, there are other important elements to consider:

• The aroma of the incense – this is the most important element (and somewhat subjective), an incense cannot be considered good quality unless it has a great smell
  • • How quickly the aroma spreads and how long it lasts for
    • And the above two elements are influenced by the quality of each natural ingredient – for example, various grades of aloeswood can have a significant impact on the final quality of the scent, and therefore the quality of the incense

In order to determine whether an incense marked as all natural is good quality, we suggest you check some of the following:

1. 1. Whether it has a center stick, and what the stick is made of – all else being equal, I would consider an incense without a center bamboo stick to be higher quality, because the stick releases a smell that disrupts the blend of aromas from the other ingredients. On rare occasions, the center stick is made from sandalwood, in which case the incense is most probably a high quality one
   2. The burn time of the incense – incense with higher quality ingredients will burn longer than lower quality incense of the same length/size
   3. For Handmade incense, the smoothness of the stick – incense burns better and releases a better blend of aromas if all the ingredients are processed into a fine powder before blending. If the incense shows clumps, this is a sign that the scent will be uneven, and the incense may not even stay lit

All else (shape, length, thickness) being equal, an incense with higher quality ingredients will burn for longer. This became extremely noticeable when we started making our own handmade incense. A handmade full length (21cm) incense stick (with ingredients that we select) burns for ~50% longer than regular store-bought incense of the same length and thickness.

Of course, if you are wondering about burn time related to the shape of the incense, that’s a different matter. Coil incense burns by far the longest as it is also literally the longest incense due to the circular coils. Length is a pretty reliable indicator of burn time but thickness is not, as the entire cross-section is burning at any one time and it may not necessarily take longer to burn through the thicker stick.

Most of the incense we use today are in the form of sticks, cones, or spirals, and we use them by lighting up one end and waiting for it to burn, which releases the fragrance. However in ancient times, incense was used in its original form – so leaves, wood, resins and animal products (like musk) were burnt directly, or heated with burning charcoal. So the container used for holding the burning incense or charcoal and incense was naturally named an incense burner. This name is still in use today for the objects designed to hold any type of incense while it is burning.

An incense holder is probably a more appropriate name for how we use incense today, and we use both names interchangeably. So an incense burner and an incense holder means the same thing, and it is an object that holds an incense, mostly for the purpose of the incense being burnt.

The best incense burner is one that suits your home and your lifestyle best. And along these lines, we think the most important factors to consider are:

1. The aesthetics of the piece and how it fits with the style of your home
2. The types of incense the holder can accommodate, and whether this is suitable for your preferred incense
3. How easy the incense burner is to care for and to clean

Our incense stick holders have a minimal style, and are easy to care for. They are made mostly to accommodate Japanese and Chinese styles of incense – ie, the type without a bamboo core in the center.

If you want an incense holder that is sure to catch the ash of your incense sticks, we’d suggest that you choose a longer shaped incense holder which holds the incense at an angle. This will make cleaning up easier after burning incense sticks.

However, not all types of incense can be held up by these types of holders. If your preferred incense is particularly long or thick, you may need to go for a holder that stands the incense up. Some incense burners of this type can also catch the falling ash, but it is less predictable as it depends on the length of your incense.  

And of course, choosing the right shape also depends on what aesthetics you like and what fits with your home. If you like an upright incense burner, by all means go for it. You can simplify cleaning up in other ways – put down some paper under the incense burner before lighting up an incense, or invest in a little brush to brush away the falling ash.

We love and live what we do. We are a Chinese-hyphenated family, and our lives are an eclectic blend of languages and cultures.

We were both first generation immigrant kids. Born in Taipei (Bill) and Chengdu (Miranda), we moved with our families to the US and Australia at the age of 8 and 10 respectively. Through our teens and twenties, we experienced the whole spectrum of emotions typical of immigrants: social exclusion, cultural rejection, identity confusion.

In our twenties, partly in search of our roots, and partly in search of opportunities, we both moved back East, and landed in Shanghai. In this melting pot of a city, which has bridged Chinese and Western cultures for the best part of 150 years, we met, married, and finally came to terms with ourselves.

We embraced the fact that we are inherently full of contradictions: despite our preferred language now being English, here and there we inevitably come across words which we can only express in Mandarin; despite congee and chicken broth being our comfort food, we order just a little too much pizza and chocolate cake day-to-day; despite all of the rejection and confusion we felt in the Western societies that we grew up in, at times this motherland feels so alien that we are truly the foreigners.

When it became obvious that we didn’t belong here, nor where we had grown up; that we are neither American nor Taiwanese, Australian nor Chinese, we saw no other solution than to embrace it. Sure, it sucks to not belong, but it is our eclectic, multi-cultural influences that make us unique, and our lives are all the richer for it.

Over time, we realized that our story is by no means unique. Friends all around us – those from a Chinese background and those not – spoke of similar struggles with identities. The seemingly contradictory pull of the culture and traditions they were born into, and the culture and traditions that they are exposed to as adults. In some way shape or form, this story is the story of all of us.

So that is how we came to the idea of creating Kin | 恳. We wanted to create a range of products that captures the balance and interaction of cultures in their most beautiful form. Objects that are rooted in the richness of Chinese history, yet are global in their relevance.