ajcontr

This wooden chest containing nine porcelain bottles once held expensive aromatic oils. I love objects like these because they almost always tell a story. This one was apparently used as a bribe to an important Indian official, commissioned by The Dutch East India Company.

The porcelain bottles were commissioned from a Japanese artisan, in the Kakiemon Arita ware style. The box itself was created by joiners in Jakarta, Indonesia. However, the oils it once contained were more expensive than the box or the bottles, and comprised the actual gift.

Something like this makes me wonder about what kind of oils exactly were in these bottles. Because American education is Eurocentric, we might imagine oils that would have been expensive in Europe when this gift was made (around 1680 or so). Instead, I wonder what kind of oils or extracts would have been precious or rare in India at that time? What about…attar of roses?

It makes me remember this post submitted by @aseantoo about 2 years ago, about the obsession that upper class Mughal women of the 17th Century had: a passion for inventing, blending, and mixing perfumes!

This is Mughal Empress Nur Jahan / نور جهاں‎ (1577-1645). She’s said to be the inventor of attar of roses, a key ingredient in rose perfume. Although other accounts say that it was actually her mother-in-law who made the discovery:

According to the emperor, once Asmat Begam, the mother of his wife Nur Jahan, was making rose water when she noticed “a thick mass on the surface of pots where hot rose water was poured from jugs”. Asmat collected the mass and finally realised that it was so rich “that a single drop of it rubbed into the palm filled the air with an enchanting scent of tons of red roses blooming simultaneously”. Jahangir was charmed by this delightful fragrance. “There is no other scent that could compare to it. It lifts the spirit and refreshes the soul. As a token of my gratitude for this discovery, I presented the discoverer with a pearl necklace”.