Kyphi has never been a large house, and has twice refused to become one. What began as a cellar behind the Grasse jasmine market is still four pairs of hands, one maceration room, and six compositions.
Kyphi was the compound incense burned at dusk in Egyptian temples: honey, raisins soaked in wine, resins, calamus, mint, juniper and cinnamon, folded together over weeks and left to mature. Plutarch wrote that its purpose was not to please but to quiet the mind.
We took the name because the method survives in our own: many materials, long rest, and a result meant to be lived with rather than admired from across a room.
Marcel Aurand returns from the war and rents a two-room cellar behind the jasmine market. The first composition is bartered for a crate of orange blossom.
Refusing the eau de toilette boom, the house releases its first 28% extrait — sold only from the atelier door.
A handshake in the Saudi highlands secures a rose supply the house still honours with the same family, three generations on.
A conglomerate offers to buy the maison. The offer is declined, twice, in writing.
Each composition is released once a year, hand-filled and numbered by flacon.
Six-year barrel ageing for oud begins, giving Noir Oud its smoke-over-resin signature.
The full collection today: six compositions, roughly 900 flacons of each per year.
Roughly 900 flacons per composition per year. When a batch is gone, it returns the following harvest or not at all.
Every raw material is bought from a named grower. We publish the region and harvest year on request.
Eleven to fourteen weeks of cold maceration before a single bottle is filled.
Filling, corking, waxing and numbering are done by four people in Grasse — no automated line.
Return an empty flacon to any boutique for a refill at 30% less than a new bottle.
A Kyphi composition is never quietly reformulated. If a material vanishes, the fragrance is retired.
1946
Founded in Grasse
4
Hands in the atelier
11+
Weeks of maceration
900
Flacons per batch