Est. 2016 — Lewes, East Sussex
Four formulae. Eleven botanicals. We press, distil and blend in batches of six hundred, from named farms we have stood on. Every bottle carries the date it was made and the assay figures for what is in it. Nothing is reformulated for margin.
Section 01 — The material
Each botanical enters a formula as a single-origin lot with a harvest date, a grower's name and a certificate of analysis. These five are drawn from pressed specimens held in the Lewes studio — every line below is a real path, drawn in the browser rather than photographed.
Cold-pressed from seed within forty hours of collection. The current lot assays at 41% linoleic and 33% linolenic acid. Trans-retinoic acid occurs here naturally; we do not fortify it.
Distilled at low pressure over three and a half hours. The blue is α-bisabolol oxide, not a colourant — it fades under light, which is the whole argument for amber glass.
Cut by hand from basalt above the tideline. We take the hydrosol and refuse the essential oil, which carries too much dillapiole for anything used daily.
In the still within six hours of cutting. Italidiones measured at 8.1% in this lot; below 6% we decline the harvest and wait a season.
Pressed below 40°C, left unfiltered, then settled for nine days in steel. Thymoquinone assayed at 0.42% — the figure printed on the batch card.
Section 02 — The range
There is no fifth. When we cannot improve on something we stop making versions of it. Choose one to see the vessel take its shape and the ingredient redraw itself.
Fifteen drops, worked into damp skin at night. A high-linoleic serum built on rosehip seed oil and one per cent bakuchiol, bodied only with squalane. It sinks in ninety seconds and leaves nothing behind — which is deliberate, because the balm goes on top of it.
Section 03 — The evening
The sequence matters more than the quantity. Most skin problems we are sent photographs of are order-of-operations problems, or friction.
Meridian, one minute, on a dry face with dry hands. Emulsify with water at body temperature and rinse. Do not reach for a flannel.
Petrichor, twice, from twenty centimetres, eyes closed. Leave the skin frankly wet — this is the water the serum will carry.
Nocturne, fifteen drops into a wet palm, pressed over the face and the front of the neck. Ninety seconds to disappear. Wait for it.
Cirrus, a rice grain, warmed and pressed — cheeks and jaw first, forehead last. Nothing over the eyelids. Then stop touching your face.
Mornings are simpler — mist, serum, sunscreen. The balm is for sleeping in.
If the skin stings, you have used too much of everything and should stop for two days.
Section 04 — Provenance
Five growers, five countries, one buyer who visits each of them in the harvest window. We take whole lots or we take nothing, and we pay on collection rather than on delivery — which is the only part of this that is genuinely difficult.
A lot is refused for one of three reasons: the assay comes in under our floor, the harvest window slipped past the point where the oil is worth pressing, or the grower cannot tell us which field it came from. The third is the most common and the least negotiable.
Nothing is bought on an exchange. Nothing is blended across seasons to hold a specification steady — if this year's immortelle is stronger than last year's, the balm this year is stronger, and the card will say so.
Section 05 — The batch card
When a batch closes we send its card: origins, assay figures, what changed since the last one and why. No offers, no countdowns, no restock panic. You may leave from the foot of any of them.