Inkstick

Note Profile

Abstract

About

Inkstick is the solid ink of East Asian calligraphy, sumi in Japanese and mo in Chinese. It is pine soot compressed with animal glue. As a perfume note it is a fantasy accord and it smells of soot first: dry, sooty smoke over a faint gamey warmth from the hide glue, with a cool camphor edge and a wet-stone quality that only appears once the stick is ground.

Scent Profile

Smoky leads and both sources agree without qualification. Premiere Peau opens with 'smoky-sooty from pine carbon' and Wikipedia's construction is 'mainly soot and animal glue'. Soot is the majority of the object by mass, so this is the highest-confidence number here. Animalic is the glue, named as 'faintly gamey' and rendered from deer or ox hides. It is held at 0.42, not higher, because 'faintly' is the source's own word and because deer musk is listed as an option rather than a fixture. Mineral is the wet grinding stone, which is a real and specific claim but describes an act rather than the stick. It sits well below the published ink note's 0.92 because inkstick is carbon-led, not iron-gall-metal-led. Cooling_mentholic is camphor, and this is the least certain facet in the vector: both sources call it optional. Its spread of 0.28 is the widest here and reaches most of the way to zero. Leather is the same hide glue read as protein rather than as game. Dry_woody is pine carbon. Amber_resinous is the sweetgum, a storax-type resin on Wikipedia's list. Below are warm_spice for clove, creamy_woody for white sandalwood, earthy for the damp stone, and traces of water, musk and settled soot powder. Every facet under 0.30 comes from a list of possible additions, not a fixed recipe, so all of them carry spreads of 0.20 or more.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~9h lasting

Family Woody & Earthy, Amber · Musk · Leather, Elemental

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

No one distils an inkstick. The accord is built in the lab from the reference object. A stick is made by compressing pine soot, or tung-oil soot, with animal glue rendered from deer or ox hides. Makers also add aromatics that double as preservatives: Wikipedia lists clove, comfrey, ash bark, sappanwood, white sandalwood, oriental sweetgum and deer musk. Premiere Peau's gloss separates it from Western iron gall ink, calling it less metallic and more organic and smoky, and ties the mineral-wet quality to the act of grinding the stick on a wet stone.

Usage in Perfumery

One Fragrantica attestation and no Parfumo placements. It is used where a composition wants East Asian cultural specificity rather than a generic ink accent, so it sits against paper, tea, sandalwood, cedar and incense. The published drawing-ink and ink notes cover the Western inkwell. This one covers the grinding stone.