How long does a scented bead bracelet keep its scent?
Our scented bead bracelets keep their scent for more than five years. The scent is clearest when a bracelet is new and softens as it is worn. Kept in a closed box or pouch when you are not wearing it, away from sun and heat, a bracelet holds its scent longer.
Why it lasts
Our beads are hexiang 合香, blended incense: plant materials ground to powder, blended to a formula, shaped into beads by hand and dried for at least twenty days. The scent is not a coating. The materials that smell are the bead itself, so there is no layer on the surface to evaporate and nothing to add.
Other scented bracelets work differently. A lava-stone diffuser holds a few drops of oil, which sellers say last from about a day to a week. A perfumed cord is replaced after about a week. Four ways a bracelet can carry scent compares them.
How it changes
A new bracelet is at its strongest. The scent doesn’t stop on a set date: it grows quieter over the years, and it lasts longest in a bracelet that is put away between wears.
What makes it fade faster
- Water. The beads are pressed powder. Take the bracelet off before washing your hands, bathing or swimming.
- Sun and heat. Not on a sunny windowsill, not in a hot car.
- Open air. Between wears, keep it in a closed box or pouch.
- Perfume and lotion. Keep them off the beads.
What the old registers said
Chen’s Incense Register, compiled by Chen Jing with a preface dated 1322, gives a recipe for osmanthus beads and says how to keep them: wrap them in new silk floss and take them out now and then to look at, “and the scent can last several years”.
The same volume tells owners of scented rings, pendants and strings of beads to rub away the sweat and grime with horsetail after the summer, so the damp doesn’t spoil them. If the beads have spoiled, it says, wash them in warm water and dry them in the sun. That advice was for those beads. Ours should not be washed.
The register also records how long a scent could cling to a person. In a story it takes from the History of Jin, a rare incense sent as tribute from the Western Regions stayed on whoever it touched for a month. The emperor had given it to only two households. So when the minister Jia Chong smelled it on his aide Han Shou, he worked out that his daughter had taken some for him, and he let them marry.
Our beads aren’t made to the old recipes.
The four bracelets
How hexiang was made and worn is in Hexiang: blended incense, worn as beads. What is in each of our four bracelets is in the materials register.
Sources
- Chen Jing, Chenshi xiangpu 陳氏香譜, volume 4 (孫廉訪木犀香珠, 收香珠法, 竊香).