Kinnabari v4

[twilighteyes]

Unreleased prototype, no scent description given.

 

Cinnabar, derived from Greek kinnabari, is a mineral, mercuric sulfide, occuring in red crystals or masses. Used as a pigment (bright red or vermillion). Also a red resinous juice of a certain Eastern tree, which was believed to be a mixture of dragon's and elephant's blood.

 

A light yellow oil, this one is interesting and very different. It is spicy, like caraway, but not really foody. On the skin, a more medicinal fragrance appears but I can't pin point exactly what.

 

Medium throw.

[alicia_stardust]

This is pure earth and mineral. This isn't your typical dark, damp soil earth. This is the dry, clay soil of the desert with strong veins of brilliant red sand. This is the dust particles that the wind whips into your mouth and eyes on a sweltering hot summer day. This is the earth of red rocks and cliffs, dry stones, sand, and desert.

 

There is a beautiful mineral quality to this that reminds me of parched desert rocks and earth that are suddenly dampened by rivulets of spring water. There is just a hint of dry spice to this blend but it's not cinnamon or cassia. This blend is amazingly evocative and incredibly unique.

[Mordath]

Minerals stored in a wooden chest that once held exotic herbs and spices. Beautiful and evocative

[zankoku_zen]

Oh man, this definitely has a 'red clay' dirt smell. I would guess dirt, sandalwood and some black patchouli. It's a spicy, kinda stinky, dirt blend.

[Rhowan]

In the bottle: cold stone, dry earthy a bit astringent to me

 

Just applied: I can smell a bit of dirt and a note like Eucalyptus which grows and grows until the Eucalyptus is SCREAMING at the top of it's lungs. It is so over the top that I can't even get away from it. It is on my wrist but it is still making my eyes water!

 

As it dries down I have lost any note there was at first to the eucalyptus. I am seriously thinking of washing it off.

 

Completely dried down: Luckily, I got side tracked in a conversation and didn't wash it off. Thank Heaven for small favors! The eyewatering eucatlyptus note faded and then dissapeared. What I am left with is a beautiful stone, dirt and minerally scent.

 

Conclusion:Kinnabari is beautiful when it is completely dried down. It smells of deep earthy mineral, stone and dirt. That description might make you think of this a kind of a flat, one dimensional oil but believe me, it is not! The red, deep mineral scent gives this a depth and feeling. Definitely a beautiful prototype!

[schackjj]

Wet: A mix of mineral smells swirling around.

 

Drydown: Still very mineral, but I can't pin it down. It has a dusty scent to it. It also has a slight sourness, which usually means that there's a floral in there somewhere and my brain is sending it to my olfactory senses as 'sour.' And I got no eucalyptus at all.

[crebbsgirl]

I love reading other people's impressions of this. I was gifted with a little bet to test, so here are my thoughts:

 

Wet I get a touch of vetiver, and as it dries, there is a spice component (I would agree with the caraway assessment) and I also think opoponax. It's a dry resinous spice blend I think. I also don't get anything resembling eucalyptus. There is a bit of an earthy hint to it.

[Coldfire]

An astringenty cedar scent...that smells quite old and musty. And then I get a trace of pickles? ugh. Pickling spices? After this dried down I was itching and scratching where I applied it. Wish I knew what note so I could put that on the avoid list.

[yeahbutnobut]

Kinnabari

 

In the bottle: minerals and crushed metal and clay. Very intriguing.

Wet on skin: this smell reminds me of paints for some reason…and clay too.

Dry on skin: for some reason I just had a flashback of art class at school when smelling this…it smells of paints and clays and a hint of glue. Not the harsh, chemical, solvent paints and glues, but the softer scents of the kinds of paints and glues that you probably won’t get you high (not that I’ve ever done that, but you know what I mean). I also smell chalk here, and indeed, I smell the desert soil and dust mentioned in previous reviews. There’s a sharp note ringing through it that smells metallic, but also vaguely fruity/floral, as well as a little bit of sweetness. But overall, it smells of red dry dusty minerals.

After a while: this scent makes me want to get arty! It really smells like pastels and chalks and paints and clay. It’s uncanny how mineral it smells, and it still smells ochre-y and chalky and red. But it also sweetens a bit.

After a few hours, I smell something warm and dry but a little less unusual than the minerals, more familiar…I think it may be sandalwood. Or maybe musk, or both? But I think it is a wood.

Verdict: one of the most unusual BPALs ever. Every time I think Beth has surpassed herself with odd notes (metal, blood, unusual fruits and veg etc), I always get taken aback by even more new, surprising, imaginative perfume notes she concocts…like the mineral scent this has. It smells dusty and red and clay-ish, a little like paint or art clay or pastels at times, it also smells very geological. This brings to mind shades of ochre and red. This brings to mind images of Ayers Rock/Uluru, the colours of flaming sunset in the Australian outback. Or maybe even images of the surface of Mars. This is uncannily mineral, unsettlingly so…how does she do it? This scent is incredibly unique, there’s nothing like it either in BPAL or in the whole scentiverse. I’m still working out whether I like it as a perfume, but as a conceptual scent, it’s fantastic!

Emoticon rating:

Is it a keeper? just a decant-I can’t really wear this as perfume but this scent is so different and a little nostalgic so I want to keep a bit.

Edited June 18, 2009 by yeahbutnobut

[boxinghelena]

I wanted to try Kinnabari because of the clay reviews. I work in the asphalt industry in a lab & am quite familiar with what clay smells like. I was excited to have a clay "dirt" scent in my possession.

 

Unfortunately, it didn't work one me at all. It was very weird on me actually. Almost metallic & plastic clay-like. I can't describe it correctly but it was all wrong on me. Very wrong!!

 

[tarotgirl99]

Very lemon-woodsy in the imp, but wet it's much more lemon. Eventually it dries down to a sickly lemon with wood-tones. It's kind of nasty.

[sookster]

hellz yeah...dusty clay...bone dry...like a desert...

 

i think i am in love...a peppery, sweet quality that is beyond unique...

hmmm...must be that anise or fennel....

totally digging!!

[Seismogenic]

When the list of prototypes for the most recent Cleaning Out The Cobwebs event went up, I was intrigued by the mention of a few scents that corresponded with minerals or chemical elements. That wasn't enough incentive for me to drive out to Burbank that close to finals week, but as soon as I saw reviews of Kinnabari that mentioned distinctly mineral notes and impressions of red desert rocks, I knew I wanted to try somehow. I managed to get a bottle through a swap with the wonderful Rhowan, and I'm so excited to give Kinnabari a test drive!

 

In the bottle: Red dusty sediment and some sort of sharp spice. Maybe also a touch of cinnamon, though that's not the main spice I'm getting.

 

Wet on skin: Less spicy now, or the spice has better melded in with the other stuff. Right now, the best description I can come up with is heat-steeped oxidized-red fine-grained sedimentary rocks. Which is, I guess, pretty specific.

 

Drydown: Freshly dry, I swear there's a little bit of a metallic edge to the dusty sediment scent that's the main thing going on here. My earlier impression of "oxidized-red" was just a color description, but now it makes sense sniff-wise as well! There is still a definite impression of warmth going on here, enhanced by what's left of that spice note that I can't ID. At one hour in, not much has changed, though, oddly, the scent seems to have become a little stronger. It's still sun-heated fine red sediment with a very slight metallic overtone and a little bit of spice.

 

Five hours later: Overall much softer, but still a blend of oxidized red sediment and a little bit of spice, which continues to lend an impression of heat to the whole thing.

 

End of the day: Faintly dusty, but what's left still gives an impression of rust red.

 

Overall: This is one of the most unabashedly overtly geological BPALs I've ever had the pleasure to sniff, and I would absolutely emphasize the term "pleasure" here! I think this is a gorgeous blend that captures a very distinct impression of oxidized red sediments steeping in the desert sun. I've never been to Red Rock Canyon in central California, but I think Kinnabari smells how photos of Red Rock look. But another thing that Kinnabari perfectly fits is the characteristics of the actual mineral cinnabar! To consult the mineralogy textbook, cinnabar (HgS) has an adamantine to metallic luster, an earthy red color, leaves a deep red streak, may be very fine grained, and is often associated with areas of geothermal activity. I guess that's not sedimentary explicitly, but the rest of that fits the scent so well that I'm kind of floored. Not to mention that I'm kind of in love. I feel very lucky to have gotten my hands on a bottle of this, and I know I'll be using it - though sparingly, since Beth is probably the only person who knows whether or not it will actually end up in the GC ever.

[Blood onmy hands]

In the bottle, this smells like spicy cedar and red clay. Very interesting.

 

On my skin, this smells like dry cedar chips, a hint of spearmint, and a hint of red clay. As it dries down, the red clay smell is stronger. It smells slick to me somehow, like slipping on wet red clay. It makes me think of earth, forests, and caves (and dinosaurs - I am strange, lol). After a half hour, this has morphed into a more a dry earth scent, and I don't pick up anything like spearmint anymore either. It still smells like red earth, though, and it's a very unique smell. I find it very comforting.

 

I really love this. It smells like red earth and ancient, wonderful things...

[fairnymph]

Light amber coloured oil. Sharp/acrid and dusty. It does smell like clay, as others have noted. It also reminds me of certain strong acids, like HCl. Eeek.

 

I was too scared to try this one on my skin.

[Sapphy]

Frankincense incense, with a little geranium. Totally not my thing, lol I didn't try it on.

[cranberry]

Wet – dry spice, there’s a heat here but it’s very dry. It reminds me of cumin or coriander. More coriander I think. Maybe a touch of pepper. As it dries, it’s clearly not cumin I’m smelling. There’s something a bit sour underneath the spice and heat. This is a very odd scent, not something to wear as perfume but more an exercise in expressing a concept or idea. Now that it’s completely dry and been on a while, there is very clearly spice – coriander or even caraway – I can’t say, but that the strongest to me. I get no clay or mineral smell.

[angelicruin]

I'm getting a very STRONG cedar wood note on my skin, and spice, LOTS of spice. I actually kind of like this, which is a bit surprising given the description I just wrote, but my decant is more than enough for me.

 

Thanks to fairnymph for the decant.

[edenssixthday]

Kinnabari v4 - This opens up with a really strong, overpowering, and totally delicious caraway scent. It's all caraway all the time! As it starts to dry down, the caraway settles down (but not much!) and I notice something behind it that reminds me of the scent of wet clay. It is absolutely not something I would ever wear if I wanted to smell pretty. To me, it's more of a novelty scent. And now, I'm craving caraway rye bread.

[ApothecaryScribe]

This bottle arrived tonight from Etsy (amazingly fast delivery from West to East Coast, jai!) This is my first impression from trying a small dab on wrists:

 

Immediate high register of caraway (almost eucalyptic edge) segueing into rock- and plaster-dust notes, the pleasanter end of the smell of a construction site.

 

As the sharper and more volatile caraway/mineral scents fade a bit, passing through the aroma of a wet slate mountain path, a strong warm note somewhere between cumin and mellow masculine pheromones comes forth, its richness tempered by a lingering clay/rock-dust descant. At this point I thought "I really like this, but it smells a bit too dirty (organically and minerally) to wear to work." I continued thinking that as the cumin/perspiration gave way to something spicy, but still tawny, something I almost recognized.

 

Several minutes later, it dawned on me: That final note is sandalwood! Reminiscent of the slightly funky hippie sandalwood single-note oil I wore as a student, moreso than the ethereal notes of therapy-grade sandalwood oil. It gradually got less tawny and more spicy.

 

The whole process took maybe half an hour: my skin has always done more rapid differential evaporation than average. It may be that a larger starting dab and/or longer time will bring out different parts of the spectrum; still I'd guess that that sandalwoodish note is the core drydown. If a longer test falsifies this hypothesis I'll post again.

 

I'll ask my Gallant Husband to try this too--I bet it syncs beautifully with actual masculine pheromones.

 

Edit: On my Gallant Husband this was splendiferous. It started the same way with sharp almost jarring caraway, then settled into warm red earth-tones of the sandalwood/pheromones/cumin, which melded, sweetened up and had throw like a catapult, scenting the whole room...definitely made for his chemistry.

Edited May 27, 2013 by ApothecaryScribe

[Naomi Kelsey]

I took a chance on this based on the reviews, and got it from the etsy site. I really like it. Some posters have noted it has a cedar chest smell, which I find very accurate. It's very dry, spicy, and very woodsy, without being green. There seems to be a slight graphite smell to me, like freshly sharpened pencils. A fine metallic smell mixed with a cedar-wood smell. Very unusual--I might pass it on to my sister or sister in law, as they like to wear neutral scents and I prefer more lush, creamy, spicy, or deeper scents. But I do like it!!