An idea or challenge started a long time ago when a friend asked if a gunpowder scent could be created. We said yes, and it didn’t take much time to find a few manufactured materials that would smell exactly like gunpowder. It was easy, so the challenge changed: let’s make it with all 100% natural materials, let's take the alcohol out and make it pure oil based. Let's change it from just a single accord of gunpowder to a multi-accord of leather, tobacco, and rose while keeping the smoky gunpowder accord there.
That was a real challenge, and those who know us know how much we like a good challenge. For months, our master perfumist and house owner, Mr. Ali Attar, worked on it. It was something we hadn’t made or tried before. The passed-down knowledge and experience of over 300 years were very helpful in understanding how we mix and layer, but still, there was a lot of trial and error. Out of 10 different results, we selected the top three, and then we tweaked, changed, and tried again. The final scent, or Attar, had to go through the longevity test, the silage and projection test, the multi-layer complexity test, and the recognition of each of the main body materials test, and finally, the non-sneezing test (natural oils and materials such as powerful rose or spices can cause sneezing for many people, so it has to be harnessed and layered carefully). All this wasn’t easy at all.
After many tweaks, edits, and changes, we were asked to sample the final result. To our astonishment, this oil had everything mentioned above. It smells like gunpowder initially, with a very powerful and vibrant gunpowder-like smokiness and sharpness, but you can recognize the Oud, tobacco, rose, Musk, and leather in it. This is not just gunpowder, we said; this is the battlefield, a scent that truly evokes emotions and memories buried deep in our minds and DNA.
Challenged by the name, we could call this amazing new creation many things. We decided to keep the first initial name, which was on the handwritten label of the first batch, “Gunpowder#1.” Why don’t we call it battlefield? Why don’t we call it Dardanelles (the Giant Ottoman cannon that was an engineering marvel in its time), or maybe we should call it Courage or Honor to represent the virtue or feeling it evokes? We decided not to, as some of the greatest and most beautiful things are the simplest and most obvious. We called it Gunpowder#1, but for those who will own and experience this olfactory journey, call it what they like, just like a man or a woman given a name by their parents and grow to find their true love, and their name becomes my dear or my beloved. We will let you find a name for this one, as it can only be seen, understood, and appreciated by those who experience it.
Layered in three levels—light, medium, and heavy oils—matured in its final form for over a year. Made with Indian, Laos, and Chinese oud, Turkish, Bulgarian, and Taifi rose, Siberian musk, Indian sandalwood, birch, valerian root, patchouli, jasmine, neroli, ylang-ylang, cedarwood, tobacco (Nicotiana Tabacum), and a mix of spices and herbs. All the materials used in this Attar are 50 years plus. Made in an extremely limited batch of 500ml in-house by Mr. Ali Attar.
