Made by Hand

This is a project I want to build slowly. To spend years refining and growing. To make something that carries the best of what I’ve learned—and everything I still want to explore.

I’ve drawn since I could hold a pencil. Studied fine art. Worked as a graphic designer. I’ve been a florist, delivering bouquets by bicycle. A shoemaker, sewing one-off bags and stockings from scraps. I’ve made jam from family recipes and inherited a cookie recipe laser-etched onto a cutting board in my mother’s handwriting.

And coffee. From sharing espressos off an old Krups machine with my dad as a kid, to roasting amazake-fermented microlots for the Paris Café Festival.

This project is a gathering place for all of that.

I think about the identity of this place every day. But it’s not like other brand projects I’ve worked on. For most shops, the name needs to be flexible. Something that could live in many cities. The goal is often growth. Expansion.

But for this project? The name can’t be chosen yet.

Because the place matters too much. The land will shape the name—not the other way around. The location isn’t a backdrop. It’s a collaborator. The building, the trees, the birds nearby, the local materials—they all have something to say.

That’s why I’m still waiting. I test print methods. I try making paper from jute bags and coffee waste. I sketch and discard. I study local wildlife. I imagine what might feel native to that soil—not just to me.

Because the image we create will live on signs and labels, but also in people’s memories. I want it to feel like something discovered, not imposed. Like it could only exist in that exact place.

We only get one chance to make a first impression. But we also only get one chance to tell the truth. And I want the truth of this project—its heart, its roots, its hands—to be visible from the very start.

After finding this place, we’ll be able to research its history. To learn what came before. The journey it's been on, long before we arrived. What stories lie behind its cracked walls.

And then, slowly, to build an honest tale of what this place is. What it meant for people before—and what it will mean for us now. Perhaps a romanticized pictography. Perhaps something more fantastical. Brushstrokes on a label, a name, the beginning of a novel in which we all may get to play a small part. Just as each one of us has a story to tell—and hopefully to leave behind—so does the land. So does a home. And maybe we can find a way to tell its story while offering a bit of our own.

So I wait. And work. And trust the land will tell us when it’s time.