Aromatherapy: Essential Oils, Dried Herbs and Incense

Worth clearing up first: what we sell here is smell. An oil warmed over a tea light perfumes a room, a stick of incense fills it with resinous or woody smoke, and a bag of dried lavender smells like dried lavender. That's the whole job. We describe the scent, the plant it came from and how you get that scent out of the bottle or off the disc, and we leave the grand claims to other people. If you came looking for something else entirely, the rest of the smartshop range is a better place to browse.

Fifteen Zamnesia Oils, From Floral to Resinous

The floral end is the biggest: Rose (distilled from real blossoms, with a soft honey-like sweetness under the petals), Jasmine, Gardenia, Frangipani, Cempaka, Lotus, Sakura, Ylang-Ylang and Geranium. Woody sits with Sandalwood and Rosewood, resin with Frankincense, and the sharper, greener side with Lemongrass, Mint and Chamomile. Three to five drops in the water of a burner or diffuser scents an average room in minutes. Watch out for the dense ones: Gardenia is genuinely pungent and Rose is full-bodied, so past five drops the air turns thick and you can't take it back. If you want something you barely notice, Mint or Lemongrass sits far lighter than either.

Dried Flowers, Leaves and Bark by the Bag

Blue Lotus (Nymphaea caerulea) comes as dried flowers, and there's a Blue Lotus 15x tincture alongside it. The rest are single-herb bags: Chamomile in 50g, then Eucalyptus globulus, Lavender, Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) and Rosemary in 20g. Wild Lettuce (Lactuca virosa) is the dried, shredded leaf of a European herb in the daisy family, not an essential oil, so if you've searched for wild lettuce oil, this bag is what actually exists. One or two teaspoons per cup, boiling water, 10-15 minutes, then strain. The milky latex in the plant (lactucaria) makes it properly bitter and earthy, nothing like the gentle chamomile flowers on the same shelf. Not suitable for anyone under 18.

Sticks, Powders and Charcoal Discs

Sagrada Madre covers most of the incense. The 7 Chakra Incense box gives you seven natural sticks or smudge bombs, one per chakra in the traditional scheme: sandalwood, lavender, copal, rosemary, palo santo, myrrh and roses. Sticks burn around 50 minutes, smudge bombs 8-10. The Incense Powder comes as 7 Forces (storax, camphor, benzoin, frankincense, myrrh, rosemary and rue) or Camphor and Bay Leaf, which reads herbal and spicy with vanilla and pine behind it. Loose powder, resin and Palo Santo chips need a Purifying Charcoal Disc: light the disc, let it ash over, sprinkle the material on top. Smudge sticks are bundled dried herb tied into a wand and lit at one end, and we stock Californian White Sage, larger White Sage bundles and a Dragon's Blood stick from TRIBE. The Abalone Shell works as a rest for a smouldering stick, and the Elephant Essential Oil Burner takes water plus your drops in the dish with a tea light underneath. The Salt Stone Tea Light Holder holds the candle.

Keep It Boring and Safe

These oils are for burners, diffusers and water sprays. Don't swallow them, don't put them on skin, keep them away from eyes and out of reach of children. The liquid and the vapour are flammable, and some oils can trigger an allergic skin reaction, so see a doctor if a rash shows up after contact. Never leave a lit tea light, disc or stick unattended, stand the shell on something heatproof, and store bottles capped and upright in a dark cupboard so the scent holds.

Where We'd Start

One oil, the Elephant burner and a tea light holder. Don't fancy dealing with candles? Skip straight to the White Sage bundle or a box of sticks.