The incense holder that thinks it’s a button

It arrived looking like it had fallen off a very expensive coat. We kept it anyway.

Someone here spent a genuine minute working out which shirt it belonged to. In its defence, it is a convincing button: turned solid brass, a shallow dish of a face, a raised rim, and three drilled holes arranged just off-centre, the way a real button never quite sits straight either. It is about the size of the ones on a good winter coat, and roughly the weight of a pebble you would keep.

The joke, it turns out, is also the design. One hole takes an incense stick upright, for a slow burn straight up. One takes it at a lean, so the ash falls inwards. The third does nothing at all, which we have decided is for symmetry and not laziness. Or… Just use a different size of incenses.

Brass being brass, it will not stay this bright. Handled daily it dulls to a warmer, softer gold, and around the holes it will darken first — a small record of how often you use it. Left alone in a drawer, it stays smug and shiny and useless. We would rather you wore it in.

A small ritual for it, since a button belongs near a coat: keep it on the shelf or table where you put your keys down. Light a stick of Kayuragi as you take your coat off, before you touch your phone. By the time the smoke has found the ceiling, you are home — which is really all the object is for. It costs you the length of one match.

Worth knowing — incense in Japan was long used to measure time as much as to scent a room. A stick’s burn was a unit of work: temples timed meditation by it, and in the old entertainment districts an evening’s fee was reckoned in senkōdai, literally “incense stick money”. Your keys-down stick is an old habit in new clothes.

Click the image above to explore the Brass Button Incense Holder.

Warmed, never burned: the ritual of Nerikoh

In Japan, You Don’t Smell Incense — You Listen

There is a Japanese phrase, monkō, that translates literally as “listening to incense.”

It isn’t a poetic flourish. In kōdō — the way of incense — you don’t smell a fragrance, you listen to what it has to tell you. Smelling is something that happens to you. Listening is something you do, with attention.

Kōdō is counted as one of Japan’s three classical arts of refinement, alongside chadō, the way of tea, and kadō, the way of flowers. The other two are well known outside Japan. Incense is the one that never travelled.

It began as a Buddhist offering, but during the Muromachi period rare fragrant woods started arriving at the imperial court as gifts, and incense moved out of the temple and into courtly life as a pursuit in its own right. Its formal codification is generally credited to Sanjōnishi Sanetaka, a court noble of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The practice is more restrained than most people expect. A sliver of fragrant wood — often aloeswood, sometimes kyara, the rarest grade — is cut into a square a few millimetres across and set on a small sheet of mica above heated ash. The wood never burns. It’s warmed until it releases its scent, and the cup is passed from hand to hand, each person raising it and taking three quiet breaths.

You can borrow the essence of this without any of the apparatus. Light one good stick, put your phone in another room, and give it your attention for the length of the burn. Notice where the scent changes as it goes. That, stripped of six centuries of ceremony, is the whole idea.

Worth knowing: kōdō has a game. In genjikō, five incenses are warmed in turn and passed around, and you must work out which were the same and which were different — without ever being told. Your answer is recorded not in words but as a diagram: five vertical strokes, with those you judged identical joined across the top by a horizontal bar. There are exactly fifty-two possible patterns, each named after a chapter of The Tale of Genji. The symbols became so admired as pure design that they escaped the game entirely — you’ll still find them on kimono, ceramics and family crests today, six hundred years after they were invented to score a parlour amusement among nobles.

Click an image below to explore our aloeswood and sandalwood incense.

The Balanced Fragrance of Edonishiki Incense

Edonishiki takes its name from the Edo period — the roughly 250 years between 1603 and 1868 when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s rule brought a long stretch of order to Japan, and with it, the refinement of crafts that needed time and stability to develop properly. Incense-making was one of them.

The scent itself reflects that period more than any single ingredient does. It’s built from aromatic woods and gentle spices, blended so that no one note pushes forward — the aim is balance rather than intensity. Lit in a room, it settles rather than fills; it’s a scent designed to be lived alongside, not one that demands attention. That’s a harder thing to get right than a bolder fragrance would be, which is part of why we wanted to feature it.

Each box holds 220 sticks, each about 140mm long, with a burn time of roughly 25 minutes per stick — long enough to mark a short stretch of time without needing to watch the clock. It’s made in Japan, in keeping with the traditional methods the Edo period is known for.

Because the burn is even and unhurried, Edonishiki works well as something lit during ordinary moments rather than reserved for anything special — reading, working at a desk, or simply while a room settles down for the evening. There’s no wrong way to use it; it’s built to be low-maintenance in the best sense.

Interesting fact: in Japan, incense appreciation was formalized into kōdō (“the way of fragrance”), and practitioners traditionally say they “listen” to incense (monkō) rather than smell it — the practice took its current form during the Edo period.

You can find Edonishiki in the shop – press the image below.

THE SLOW BURN OF AN EVENING RITUAL

Not every table needs a full-length taper. Sometimes what’s useful is something shorter — easier to fit into a low holder, easier to group two or three together without crowding the surface. That’s the reasoning behind our stubby candles.

Each one is made from plant-based wax and finished with the same smooth taper as our standard candles, just scaled down: 110mm in height, 22mm across — about 4.5 inches tall. Burned correctly and kept out of draughts, they hold a steady flame for roughly four hours and are built to burn without dripping. They’re sold as a loose pair, so you can light both together or keep one back.

The smaller size is what makes them practical rather than just decorative. They sit well in shallow or narrow holders that a full taper won’t fit, work in pairs down the centre of a table, or stand alone somewhere a taller candle would look out of place — a low shelf, a bedside table, a smaller dinner setting.

A few basics keep them burning cleanly: trim the wick to about 5mm before lighting, set them in a stable, heat-resistant holder, and don’t let them burn for longer than four hours at a stretch. Full care and safety details are listed on the product page.

Interesting fact: before mechanical clocks, marked candles were used to tell time — the even burn rate meant hour-lines scored along the length actually worked as a timer.

You can find the stubby candles, sold as a pair, in the shop – just click on the image below.