The Tiny Luxury: Santa Maria Novella's Terracotta Melograno

Mine sits on a little terracotta saucer next to a vase, a candle holder and a stack of books.

If you didn't know what it was, you would probably assume I had simply decided that my interior needed a small pink pomegranate.

Which, to be fair, would also be entirely possible.

But this one is made by Santa Maria Novella, the Florentine fragrance house, and the terracotta itself is scented with their Melograno fragrance.

There is no flame to light, no bottle with reeds sticking out of it and nothing to plug into a socket.

It simply sits there and quietly makes the space smell lovely.

I find that ridiculously charming.

I love candles. Probably more than is economically sensible.

But a candle creates a very specific moment. You light it when you sit down in the evening, when people come over or when you decide that Tuesday at 19:14 requires ambience.

This feels different.

The fragrance is just... there.

Sometimes I walk past and notice it. Sometimes I come back into the room and catch it again. It has gradually become part of what that little corner of the house feels like.

And because the object itself is beautiful, I don't have to hide the home-fragrance part of it.

Quite the opposite.

It is the thing I want to leave out.

The name Melograno might make you expect something juicy, sweet and fruity.

It really isn't.

To me, it smells much more grown-up than that: warm, softly floral, a little earthy and almost old-world.

There is something very European about it.

Not hotel lobby trying to smell expensive.

More old Florentine house with beautiful shutters, cool stone floors and something mysterious sitting on an antique cabinet.

Which, admittedly, is quite a specific brief for a small piece of terracotta.

But somehow it manages.

For reference, Santa Maria Novella describes Melograno with notes including bergamot, bitter orange, pomegranate accord, rose, ylang-ylang, oakmoss, labdanum, patchouli and musk.

Tiny Luxuries aren't really about buying expensive things for the sake of buying expensive things.

At least, mine aren't.

They're about deciding that some of the completely ordinary parts of life are allowed to be beautiful too.

The glass you drink your iced coffee from.

The soap next to the sink.

The perfume you put on even though you're not going anywhere.

The good sheets.

The completely unnecessary scented pomegranate sitting quietly on a cabinet.

None of them fundamentally change your life.

But collectively?

I think they change the experience of it.

And that is exactly why I like them.

Yes.

Not because it is the most efficient possible way to make a room smell nice. I'm fairly certain a €4 room spray would win that competition.

I would buy it again because efficiency isn't really the point.

It smells beautiful.

It looks beautiful.

It asks absolutely nothing of me.

And every now and then, I notice the little pink pomegranate sitting there and think:

Oh, I love that thing.

Which is a fairly good return on investment for something that technically has no business being necessary at all.

That, to me, is a Tiny Luxury.