Incense

A wooden box burner, made to hold the smoke as well as the stick. Cut from rosewood, this burner has a lidded lattice design: light the incense, rest it in the holder inside, and close the lid so the smoke drifts out slowly through...

Incense sticks of fragrant wood, with nothing added.Made from wood and wood powder alone, without synthetic fragrance or colouring, which is why the smoke is thinner and the scent sits closer to the material than to perfume.Used the way incense has always been used:...

A squat ceramic burner in mottled green, a dragon rising from the lid. Lift the lid and the bowl takes a coil or a stick. Set it back and the smoke has only the pierced clouds and the dragon's open mouth to leave by,...

A ceramic Buddha's hand holding a lotus lantern inside a ring of light. A backflow burner runs in reverse. The cone sits in the lotus and its smoke, heavier than air, pours down through the petals and pools on the base like water. The...

Incense wound into a coil, so one lighting lasts about two hours. A coil burns from the outside in and needs no tending, which is why it is the form kept for a long sitting, an afternoon of work, or a room being aired...

Hollow incense cones that send their smoke downward instead of up. A backflow cone is drilled through the centre, so as it burns the smoke is drawn down through the hollow and out of the base, where it pours over the burner beneath like...

A shallow bamboo box with a pierced lid, for burning incense slowly. The lid is cut through so the smoke finds its own way out, and the box holds the burn low and even under it, so a coil lasts the afternoon. Bamboo has...

A three-legged brass censer, black outside, bright within. The shape is the old one, a round belly on three feet with two upright ears, the form Chinese households have burned incense in since the Ming. The black finish stops at the rim, where the...