This essay is part of Home Icons, a series about the cultural and material histories of domestic objects.

Over the course of history, scent has been imbued with medical properties it doesn't possess, but it can also have very real physical and psychological effects, including unanticipated ones; and it can at least suggest the fulfillment of our needs and desires. Once it was said to ward off miasma; now it gives texture to otherwise formless days during lockdown and makes otherwise uninhabitable spaces feel like home.

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