We make five things, in small batches, from seven ingredients we can name, grow, press or pick ourselves. This is the index for the autumn batch. Read it slowly.
Three drops, warmed between the palms, pressed in rather than rubbed.
Sunflower oil from one farm, cold-pressed and never refined, steeped for six weeks with rosemary from the studio yard. A little lavender at the end, for the evening. It sinks in within a minute and leaves skin soft rather than shiny.
Firm in the pot, soft on the skin. One fingertip covers a face.
Beeswax from the hives on the allotments behind the studio, melted slowly into the same sunflower oil, then poured by hand into white pots. For dry patches, cuticles, the back of the hands. It keeps for a year; most people finish it in three months.
A pinch in the palm, a splash of water, and it turns to milk.
Rolled oats milled fine, dried fig leaf and a few crushed rose petals. No foam, because nothing in it foams. It cleans gently enough for morning and evening, and it travels well because there is no water in the tin.
One ingredient, distilled on the morning it was picked.
June petals go into the still before ten o'clock, while they still smell of the garden. What comes out is the mist: nothing added, nothing taken away. Spray it after the wash, or over make-up at four in the afternoon.
Mix with mist into a paste. Ten minutes, then rinse.
The slow one. Oat for calm, dried fig for a soft polish, rose to finish. It asks for ten quiet minutes on a Sunday, and it is the entry our regulars say they would keep if they could only keep one.
Two short routines. Neither takes more than four minutes.
Everything we make comes from this list. If it is not here, it is not in the pot.
| No. | Ingredient | Where it comes from | What it does | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Oat | Rolled at a mill two valleys over, then milled fine here. | Calms and softens. | 82% | 55% | |||
| 02 | Fig | Leaves and fruit from one orchard, dried in the studio loft. | A gentle polish. | 10% | 35% | |||
| 03 | Rose | Petals picked in June and distilled the same morning. | Scent and tone. | 8% | 100% | 10% | ||
| 04 | Beeswax | From the hives on the allotments behind the studio. | Holds the balm together. | 24% | ||||
| 05 | Sunflower oil | Cold-pressed and unrefined, from one farm. | The base of the oil and the balm. | 78% | 64% | |||
| 06 | Rosemary | Grown in the studio yard, cut by hand. | Brightens; keeps the oil fresh. | 16% | ||||
| 07 | Lavender | Dried in bunches above the bench. | For the evening. | 6% | 12% |
Everything is made, filled and labelled in one room. The shop is the front half of it, so you can watch the next batch being poured.