Beloved

Beloved is named for our dear friend and collaborator, Amie.
‘Amie’, french for friend, also means beloved - summing up perfectly our more than two decades long friendship.
A friendship forged in art school - darkrooms and brutal critiques, the dreaded ‘why?’. A friendship providing strength through times of devastation and much joy in moments of celebration.

This colab is about the big ideas: love, death and photographic theory.
Stay with me here...

I find the photographic theories of Roland Barthes confusing, but his notion “Death is the eidos of the Photograph” resonated with us - the photographic image as a witness to that which no longer exists. This ignited our thinking around photography’s importance for drawing out memories of moments that have passed.

Memories and moments held Beloved.

We wanted a dhoop to uplift, and support emotions of remembrance.
Beloved is for love and reminiscence, to stir memories and acknowledge loss, to take a pause, even if that brings strong emotion.

Beloved is a dhoop powerful in meaning and in scent.
Rosemary and Rose
Rosemary, the universal symbol of remembrance, is gathered from the Fermata garden, with properties that can aid in reviving body and mind, and in strengthening the heart centre.
While Rose, sweet and loving rose, the heart opener - provides strength and comfort for emotional pain and is such a glorious symbol of love.

We decided to shape these dhoops in chunky sticks we like to refer to as ‘Memory Sticks’ - I know, how cute is that?! They stand alone but for added stability they can be placed in a small dish of salt. Take a bit of care over lighting them - longer matches help.

Our goal for this dhoop may have been lofty, yet the process and result was pure creative fun.

What we are most happy about (apart from ‘Memory Sticks’ - again, how cute is that?!) is that Beloved creates a precious, sweet smoky reminder of all that is dear to us.

Love from Fermata and Amie xxx