The starting point for the collection was the candle, Sprout, deliciously scented with oud, cedar, cypress, vetiver, and clary sage essential oil. (Oldham burns oud and cedarwood incense at home, and the Sprout fragrance will also be available as his own incense.) But really the starting point is the glass holder which contains it; the glassblowers who made the candle vessels and some of Oldham’s beads are one and the same, an extension of the idea for him that home objects and jewelry. “Both have a sense of ritual around them; they bring comfort to people. Also, I obviously had to learn how to make candles,” he continued, laughing. “But ultimately everything I do is anchored in my memories and emotions.”
The scent, for instance, developed with Oldham’s friend Benjamin Lewellyn, who lives upstate near him; it was envisaged as being, he says, “a comforting and grounding scent; it brings me back to New Mexico and spending the summers there with my grandparents, being in the mountains and the dry dirt, and the rain passing through. Those are visceral emotions, so how do I anchor those in actual scent? The cedarwood has a very woody scent, while the oud has an umami quality to it. And then Ben suggested adding clary sage, as it’s less herbaceous, it has a mintiness to it.”
