After Andrew Cinnamon spent years honing his eye under design icons Fabien Baron and Murray Moss, the fragrances made by his own company, Cinnamon Projects, emerged from an endeavor that was purely personal. Andrew and his partner archived a year’s worth of images that started as inspiration without a clear destination. In this episode, he’ll divulge how a luxe line of incense and holders emerged from the mass of visuals, coaxed out by the pair’s powers of creative distillation.
After Andrew Cinnamon spent years honing his eye under design icons Fabien Baron and Murray Moss, the fragrances made by his own company, Cinnamon Projects, emerged from an endeavor that was purely personal. Andrew and his partner, Charlie Stackhouse, archived a year’s worth of images that started as inspiration without a clear destination. In this episode, he’ll divulge how a luxe line of incense and holders emerged from the mass of visuals, coaxed out by the pair’s powers of creative distillation. Hear Andrew realize aloud how finely he walks the line between collecting inspiration and digital hoarding, discuss the interplay between memory and scent, and outline the importance of ritual.
Every episode of "Finding Inspo with Alex Barinka" is shoppable through e-commerce company Verishop to help you discover new brands through their unique stories. Andrew Cinnamon and host Alex Barinka have curated their favorite products in the Finding Inspo store at verishop.com/inspo.
New Verishop customers can take 20% off their first purchase with the code INSPOCP (exclusions may apply; code expires 30 days after episode publication and cannot be combined with other promotions).
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram at @inspopodcast and Alex Barinka on Twitter and Instagram at @alexbarinka. Tweet or comment to Alex on social media, or write a podcast review, about where you are finding inspo from this conversation, and she may read your takeaways on the next episode.
This podcast is executive produced by Alex Barinka, who also serves as head of external affairs at Verishop. Special thanks to Wonder Media Network for editing and production support. See you soon!
Alex: Hey y'all. Alex Barinka here, head of external affairs at Verishop and host of Finding Inspo, the podcast that serves you a heaping helping of inspiration with a side of style. My guest today is a master of turning inspiration into reality. Andrew cinnamon is the creative director of cinnamon projects, which is both a creative agency and a maker of incense burners and perfumes. The moment I heard the story of how cinnamon projects came about, I knew I absolutely needed to hear more. It's a tale of passion, serendipity, and discovery. Now I won't spoil the ending because it's magical to hear his own telling of how his collection of life experiences and relationships sharpened his ability to turn the ethereal into the tangible for Andrew Cinnamon. He started developing his eye for design way back when he was just a kid. Romping around outside as children do.
Andrew: I mean, I think initially I was an obsessive cataloger, if you will. I'd like to archive things. So I was always looking for a, like another example of this. So if I had, you know, three leaves, I wanted to see five leaves. If I had found a feather on the ground, I wanted like 10 more to see sort of almost on an analytical level as a childlike way, um, to see what the differences were. Like what made one thing beautiful or something else like maybe less appealing. What was the extraordinary within the common object. So I found a lot of that I think within nature, you know, even within gardens within, um, and, and also within the city. So I think, you know, initially my kind of fascination was in cataloging all of these things and looking for the distinctions in between them. I, we spent a lot of time at the beach as well. So that was always, you know, about shell collecting and stone collecting and sort of pulling together all these different things and trying to understand them form and color.
Alex: And, and that's interesting to me cause I feel like a lot of kids are shell collectors. A lot of kids go for the smooth stones, but not a lot of kids end up developing such a great, um, creative and aesthetic eye that you have. We are sitting here now in your, in your studio in New York and Chelsea, um, in, in your loft here. What happened between San Francisco and in New York City?
Andrew: So what happened? I guess the first step was going away to school. At first I started studying jewelries. I, I was kind of, I think really very much inspired by this group of things that I had collected along the way. And then sort of how I looked at things and adornment and shape and kind of pulling things together. I was like, okay, I want to make these, these things. I want to make some precious things. Right. Exactly. And everything was always very handheld and very kind of intimate in that way. I eventually abandoned jewelry as a, as program all together. And I moved into sculpture and so put jewelry aside and got into sculpture and I started making sculpture because I had, um, I had sort of developed these other skills and it was great that I could begin to work at a scale that you could really engage with and I could weld bigger things and I could like work in the foundry, which I had just scratched the surface with working on jewelry.
Andrew: I finished my sculpture program, but by the end of my program I was really thinking about what if this was a building? What if this was a room? What if this was something that you could actually move through instead of just sit on or engaged or kind of put in a space. So that led me into architecture. So I finished architecture and I moved to New York. I think in, in my experience when I came to New York, I was lucky enough to meet a man named Murray Moss who is, um, very well respected within the design community. Not only for his business that he had at the time, but also his overall perspective on design and how, what it means to be a beautiful fruit bowl and that sense, you know, how you can start to take apart function from object and how you can attach feeling or emotion or you know, seeing inherent creativity in someone's approach.
Andrew: I think, you know, having moved from jewelry to sculpture into architecture, I was always thinking in different scales and some were in Moss with his design gallery in New York. I met him and I started working with him and there was this opportunity to kind of, it almost felt like a graduate program where you're like, oh, so this is how it really, this is how design and principal finds its way into our everyday life in a way that isn't simply, you know, designing a new toothbrush.
Alex: Was there a moment with Murray Moss where it just clicked?
Andrew: Well, actually met him the day I moved to New York. I was living in Soho at the time and I went and I got a coffee, a cup of coffee, and I went over to the, to the gallery to Moss, which, um, you know, it was always no drinks, no that, you know, don't touch anything, there's no drinks allowed, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Andrew: So I walked in with my cup of coffee and, and he walks straight up to me and he goes, um, I can keep that for you behind the counter. And I said, well, as long as it's still warm, when I get it back, that's fine. And he laughed and we just started talking and I had really just sort of wandered in to have a look at the gallery and see what was new and we sort of clicked right away. It was, um, I think at that time, certainly I was very young, but also having just come from architecture school where you are very open, you're always putting up your work on the wall, you're always soliciting feedback from people. There's this constant engagement. So having just moved here, I really hadn't formed any shell in that way. I was just really open to kind of seeing what I could learn and who I could need and what was next. So he's incredibly generous with his insight and experiences and sense of humor. So we clicked right away.
Alex: The serendipity of youth. You're willing and able to do whatever you want and kind of expand those horizons. So with Murray Moss, what were you doing there? How long did you work with him?
Andrew: So I worked with Murray for about five years, which was absolutely unintentional. In fact, I was only in New York for six months before I started to graduate. My intention and I had been accepted to a graduate program in Spain. And so I was just killing a little bit of time here. It happened, you know, to find an amazing sunlight in Soho with a friend and um, and thought, you know, this would be fun for six months. But because actually Murray really in that sense, Murray really changed the course of my life because I met him on that day and we started talking, you said, well, what are you doing here? I said, I'm shopping. And he says, no, no, what are you doing here? I said, I don't know. I'm just seeing what it's all about. He's like, well, why don't you work for me? And it was, it was really that kind of like you said, that's, it's that sort of moment in youth where you're like, oh, I can't think of any reason to say no and I don't have any other agenda, so I'll just say yes and see what happens.
Andrew: And so I worked with him for about five years and, um, I really was the, um, like the director of the gallery in store, which was a lot of responsibility that I had absolutely no experience in or, um, credential for. But he had a certain, he had an a trust or a sense that I would be able to arise to the occasion and the responsibility. And, um, so my role was really about managing the store on a day to day basis and really developing a team and sort of curating what they experienced with in the store would be like. So what kind of music we would listen to or how cold we would keep this store. Um, what everybody should be wearing. And sort of, it was this, again, it was collecting and actually found myself into, and hadn't thought about it this way, but I've found myself working for, um, a preeminent collector in his space, full of cabinets, full of things. And the cabinets were, um, you know, one cabinet would be all about fruit bowls or one cabinets all about bottle openers or whatever that is. And it was all about looking and understanding what made one different than the others. So just like I was doing as a child, I'd found myself, you know, after all the education in an environment where I could do all of that and someone would pay me. But
Alex: I think that's a really, really important point -- the paying you part. Right? Because I think that there is tension between the arts, whether that's a fashion or studio art or any other kind of sculptural design and the idea of commerce. Right. What's the premium for the customer? In addition to the just the functionality for beauty -- for the emotional time spent creating something. And this seems like it was the first time you were really thinking about how do you take that commerce aspect and bring it into something that is so much about creation. How did you kind of take that idea with you and what kind of things ingrained in your head from that experience?
Andrew: Within that, within the environment of Moss, it was, I think that was the sort of greatest lesson because after, after I had finished architecture school, I sort of understood that I didn't want to be an architect at that point anyway. And so the big question in my mind was, how do I marry this, you know, skill set. I've been working on this education that I've been working with that, um, and how do I bring that into something that I have a passion for doing that other people will connect with? And I mean, ultimately, anytime you're being paid for anything, it's because you're impacting someone else's life in a way that is positive for them, ideally.
Alex: And you took that from the five years with Murray Moss and you moved on to a new role.
Andrew: I had stumbled into a relationship with, um, a creative director named Fabian Baron, kind of knowing that this wasn't really the career that I was looking for. And I started a conversation with him about what he was doing. Um, he is, um, a master of design and vision, uh, in publishing, um, within the, uh, fashion, beauty, fragrance realms.
Alex: And for the folks who are like me who are just now of this space and learning, um, about just exactly his impact, he is a big deal. Ah, he was behind, he was the editorial director of Andy Warhol's interview magazine. He helped, uh, Harper's bizarre and revamp that magazine. He's been involved with, uh, a lot of huge brands like Calvin Klein, French vogue, Balenciaga. The list goes on and on and on.
Andrew: He's truly impacted our perception of luxury and beauty and, and the way it's seen and marketed without us ever necessarily knowing it. It was something that that really appealed to me was this idea that he could be, you know, that a business could be so influential but kind of under the radar unless you're in the industry and really focused on it, you don't necessarily know where, you know, where all of this energy and this creative vision is coming from and how you can apply that to different clients ideas. And so that was something about his agency that was exciting to me in the same way that Marie's business that moss was, um, exciting to me was watching Fabian be able to take his creative vision to meet other people's needs and to really create these infinitely more successful businesses for his clients because of his input.
Andrew: How did you learn from him to listen and hear the ideas of a client and draw those out and be able to then present it kind of through your lens in a way that's beneficial for all parties? Right.
Andrew: I think strangely it comes back to, you know, what I was doing as a child was comparing, you know, always lining things up next to each other and being like, what makes this, what makes this shell the most? That it is what makes this leaf the most that it is or this feather and kind of lining things up and being, you know, analytical in a way, but intuitively hopefully creative at the same time to be like, how to draw out what is most intrinsically beautiful about that specimen, if you will. So if we think about clients and feathers in the same way, um, at a glance they might all be the same. They might all be fashion clients, they might all be beauty clients, but when you put the next to each other, each one has their own marcation, their own history, you know, their own story that they need to tell and to differentiate them from the next.
Andrew: Fabian is a master at understanding how to take what is intrinsically powerful about a client and then most importantly, how to communicate that to an audience. And, um, and sometimes it's the audience that that brand might've had for years, but usually it's a whole new audience that they never knew they could reach. And um, and so that was incredible to be on a day to day level two or day to day basis to um, to watch him sort of move through that process to really kind of put a client under a microscope and say, this is what's beautiful. This is what everybody needs to know.
Alex: Let's take a quick break from my chat with Cinnamon Projects, creative director Andrew Cinnamon. I just love his story because as you'll soon hear, even the most disparate of his life experiences eventually came together to inform the company that now bears his last name. We're about to hear the story that hooked me how he and his husband Charlie Stackhouse started a personal passion project that became a business and we'll be diving into the overwhelmingly unique way they formulated the smells of their incense. But first I wanted to remind you that like every finding and episode, this one is also shoppable.
Alex: Andrew and I have curated items from our conversation and a few others that are inspiring us lately for this special finding and suppose store on bear shop next to each product. We'll also tell you why we're loving it. You can find it at bear shop.com/inspo and just for finding and spell listeners, new Bayer shop customers can take 20% off their first purchase with the code INSPOCP. That's one word. INSPOCP.
Andrew: Coming up, Andrew shares the sensory driven story behind Cinnamon Projects' scents and how he sees smell in the context of memory and ritual.
Alex: That magic of being able to correctly communicate and so intensely communicate a brand vision or a or a client vision,, it's getting much more important these days. How have, how do you think about that level of communication with customers, from your time working under Fabien to perhaps now where kind of the modes of communication have, have changed?
Andrew: Within the answer that question is, is that step between how I ended up here. You know, leaving there and ending up here. When I left baron and baron, I decided to start this business with my partner Charlie and we were very much focused on creating this a business that did exactly this sort of focusing on a young idea, a new idea, people who had experienced but they were ready to kind of venture out on their own and helping them identify what their story was. Sir is building the narrative around that and then helping them discover what that looks like graphically, what that looks like photographically, what that looks like in packaging or experience if it was about a product or a space. And we did that for years and then we just started this personal project and the personal project is really about collecting images and looking and trying to sort of rediscover and find an inspiration for what we wanted to be in do next.
Andrew: What was our new aesthetic and a lot of that was driven by exactly what you're saying is this density within the market. In that period of time, what had changed is like, you know, the iPhone is developed, Instagram happened, I, all of this stuff and we're looking at images all the time and we're liking, liking, liking, liking. So it was figuring out what do we really like and what of this is really about us, you know? And there are two, there are two ways that we are engaging with people. One is because, because we want to be supportive. So do we like the image? Maybe we don't like the image. Do we like the person we want them to do? Well, we like the den. We like it, you know, then there's another thing that you just, you're impacted emotionally by something that you're seeing or something that you're reading.
Andrew: Um, something that you're watching. So we took this, we created this brief for ourselves. We were going to treat ourselves like a client basically, and carve out time and start just things that back to collecting, collecting. Yeah. There we are. Um, start collecting images and um, and writing like poems and images and you know, swatches of fabric, you know, pieces of wood, a pebble from a vacation, whatever it was. We're going to start collecting absolutely everything and everything is photographed. And then we created this archive. And Luckily, um, we have someone who works in our studio who was looking after the archive for us. She did a better job than we ever thought was going to happen. We just thought we were going to have this sort of big thing. But what we would do, we'd collect a picture and we'd make note on it.
Andrew: What time of day was it that we, what was the day of the week? What year was it? So simple date stamp stuff, which we do for everything because it gives context to why this thing is in our hands, right? We collected all of this content and uh, okay, we'll just see what happens with it. It'll, it'll reveal something to us. So it took about a year to do that. And at the end of the year we sat back, Charlie and I looked at the archive and thought, okay, well now what do we, there's a lot of imagery here. There's a lot a year. If you imagine how many things you go through and sort of are drawn to in the course of the year, how many things you read that move you, how many, you know, openings that you go to. That have some trace of inspiration in them. So we had put everything together and sat back and thought, okay, are we going to look at this?
Andrew: So we started looking at everything by the time of day because we thought that would be the most ultimately non bias way is sort of the most impartial way to look at something because you know, it had nothing to do with the season. It had nothing to do with the day of the week and the arc and that it just was the time of day happens every day, why not? And all of these different chapters started to reveal themselves. Uh, seven o'clock in the morning whenever we saw it at seven o'clock in the morning, did not at all look like 2:00 AM and didn't look like 4:00 PM didn't look like 8:00 PM. There were all of these different, really intrinsically unique sort of like hyper individual characters to these different hours of the day. We surprised by that. Absolutely surprised. Okay. I mean I was just trying to figure out how to filter this all down so to, you know, to look at it in a way that seemed, I'm free from, you know, any preconception that we might have in approaching them.
Alex: Because there's definitely a fine line there between collecting and hoarding. Right? So, you know, it seems like this process, putting some method to the madness was necessary.
Andrew: I've never thought about being a digital harder. Yeah, I might be guilty of that. Um, but there is a fine line. But what was really striking about it was to, I guess I should preface, we did not review the archive at all during the year. We never looked back at it. So every, all of the of the collection at the end, it was all the first time we had seen all of this stuff together. So there were certain things that were striking one unique character of each hour, but also how many times you collect the same image without even realizing it. So I might have one image in the art, you know, Helmut Newton image that I love, that's a hundred times I've collected it in the course of the year and not remembered that I'd collected it before, but also given all of these different emotional content, they, it shows up at different times of day.
Andrew: It shows up, you know, with different sort of character references at different emotional hashtags to it. So what Charlie and I figured out and what we were ultimately looking for was the commonality within all the variation and what that, what that was. What we recognized was that everything was very sentimental. Memory provoked, everything was very dense and rich in memory. He and I didn't collect things that were completely outside of our points of reference or experiences. There were things, you know, that took us back to trips we had taken together, experiences we'd had in our childhood images that we love for particular reasons. There was nothing that was truly kind of foreign to us. And we had memories attached to almost everything that was was really in the archive. So we thought, well, what do we do with this? Right? So we started doing some research and what we, what we learned was that our memories are most provoked by our sense of smell and how powerful our sense of smell actually is in our day to day life in our year to year life and in our entire existence at, I believe it's 12 weeks in the womb, we have a fully developed sense of smell.
Andrew: So we have a fully developed sense of smell at birth, right, far greater than our emotional set and any other sense, our sight, our hearing, we're growing, all this stuff, everything comes back to our connection between smell and ultimately emotion smelling emotion are linked within our mind and our brain. And so there's this really exciting potential within that. And what Charlie and I decided to too was to take all of these images that we had collected that were all based through our, are tied together through memory and distill them into smells with the idea of trying to make objects or sense, uh, tried to distill out of this archive things that would encourage other people in their memory and their memory process to help people sort of collect and instill emotion through scent, into object and therefore heightened their daily experiences. Um, allow people to have a kind of ritual through that experience. What we knew is that we didn't need to make another image cause there we don't have to make images and we don't have to do, you know, it was sort of the charge for us was like how do we impact other people's lives and you take this thing, be inspired, create something that then becomes a meaningful memory marker for someone else.
Alex: Which is interesting to me because your whole, your history that we've talked through has been very visually charged, very emotionally charged but up, but very visually charged. I think smell has this ability to almost serendipitously bring you back to a place, right? It's, it's, you must don't realize that there's sometimes that moment where you have to think, where do I know this from? What is this reminding me of? It? It takes you kind of more on a mental journey, um, but it's also less obvious. How do you go from visual to send? What was that process like and breaking down those chapters into the sense that you now have?
Andrew: Well, I will say, uh, although not mentioned, every feather has a smell. Every rock has this smell. Every leaf has a smell. And that was definitely part of the experience of collecting. Even in my youth, I always marked that I knew what came from the beach, what came from the city, what came from the forest. Like we had a sort of emotional connection always. But what we did to create the sense that that was now our project, right? We had given ourselves that space and the brief, we relied on all of the hashtags essentially. So it became this kind of hybrid of a, a data project. And then this visual distillation project diving into a process that we knew nothing about. I'm not a perfumer. Charlie's not a perfumer and none of us had studied and you know, neither of us had studied it. So we weren't delving into, uh, you know, after all of the jewelry, the sculpture, the architecture, Charlie's education and graphics and art, you know, we, we're now jumping into a toolbox that we just had never opened before we, so, um, so for us, I think the, it was both exciting but also an accessible way to get started with.
Andrew: So have sat parameters ultimately. So in within the chapters that we had ultimately created through each hour of the day, some chapters were highly, um, abstract. They were filled with architecture and sign, um, landscapes. Yeah, basically all nonhuman. They were all sort of pictures of space. 7:00 AM 7:00 AM there's a lot of space in 7:00 AM and then certain hours, like 2:00 PM or 11:00 PM is a great example. We're really carnal human portraitures skin. Like everything was kind of essential and all human based. So we sort of separated those two things apart. We were like, oh, we have these chapters to work from. Some are abstract architectural at theorial and out there and some are really kind of beautiful and essential and all representations of the human condition in some way or other. So we had that. So we started by breaking it down again and then we um, and then we went image by image.
Andrew: So within those hours we took each hour as its own sort of project. As each hour would be a scent and we started to, because of the archive, you're able to just instantly filters. So like show me space, show me skin, show me red, show me sad, show me happy. Like whatever these different ways that we had thought to notate along the way and what we did, we assigned notes to notation essentially as we started to say, okay, well skin that sounds like skin is a direct parallel to sandalwood in our, in the system that we've created. So then suddenly we knew that 2:00 PM started to be a sandalwood scent because that Hashtag was the, was at the top as we started to filter through. It was the most used within that. And then, you know, we chose the number of the notes based on their frequency within the hour. And then our job was to balance those notes into something that we thought would be really beautiful and have a certain harmony that people might perhaps enjoy smelling at home or make a memory. Um, best case scenario. So that's how we, we started into making.
Alex: And it's not just the scents. I mean the, the architectural design that went into the incense holders. I'm sitting here, y'all can't see this in their studio. They have them all laid out here. They're beautiful, they're bronze, they're structural, they're, they're very tactile. It kind of does give you a very visceral sense that this is something that's beautiful and that's thoughtful. How did you go through the creation process for the different incense holders?
Andrew: So as we were moving through the sync creation, we kept returning to the archive and shuffling up. So we, so there were times when we stopped looking at them by, I stopped looking by hours and looked at shapes and we stopped looking at, you know, we would, we would just keep filtering through in different ways to see what images would come together and what would be inspiring for us. Ultimately the concept of using scent to impact the course of your day, which is something that Charlie and I have always done in our time together and something that we wanted to be part of the essence of the project was sort of how to create that ritual. And so it was important to us to, to make an object to balance the sort of ethereal nature of scent. But because we had decided to create incense and naturally needed a holder and, and we found the cues for what we wanted to do within the archive. So takes us back to space again.
Andrew: Definitely takes us back into a lot of pictures of space, a lot of landscapes. Um, but architecture as well and sort of pulling out Charlie from childhood has always had a fascination of ancient Egypt and the iconography. And carvings and farms, all of that. So that found there were a lot of images within the archive from ancient Egypt. And so we started looking into that and kind of moving through that source, this sort of endless source images to give us inspiration on how to move forward with a, with an object.
Alex: And I, I want to get to this idea of ritual, but first I want to talk about how I'm obsessed with these Circa Mineral Incense Burners. How did you then land on, um, having these minerals, having these stones incorporated into this idea?
Andrew: So then the minerals were an important facet, I guess, of the ideas we were working through them. The idea of working with the minerals minerals came obviously through the archive as well. So it wasn't an idea that we grabbed, but it was because of our sensitivity to them to begin with. And it came back to this certain notion when we were working on scent that there's this way in which we can proactively set intention. So throughout history, the minerals. So at each of the minerals, you know, amethysts rose car, it's on a venturing, you know, each one has their own property and there's a lot of dialogue around that or a lot of people ask, "Do you believe in that?"
Alex: Well, do you?
Andrew: I don't know why I wouldn't, you know, there are a lot of things in life that are hard to prove. There's a positive association with the material. And if you accept that positive association and every time you use it, you think of that, then it is a positive. So than it is a positive, you know, a positive impact on your life. And in a way of intention setting, which comes back to that idea of ritual and a way in which you can engage in that positivity throughout your day.
Alex: And I think that the idea and it to, to borrow some of the language that you all use around cinnamon projects about it being inspiration distilled. You know, and, and that, and how that ties back into this idea of ritual with creativity. Sometimes it can be a little bit unwieldy, right? You can have a year's worth of archives and, and not quite know what to do with it. But that distillation process, um, is really important as you, uh, kind of go through life as a creative. How does ritual play into you actually, uh, being a finisher too and getting to kind of a, an end game, whether that's a deliverable for our client or a something new and beautiful for Cinnamon Projects?
Andrew: Well, I think for salmon projects, and in this, in this instance, we were totally liberated from that because we weren't, there was no intention to make a product or actually to create a business or really share it with people outside of giving it as gifts. We were really making these sense and making the incense and the perfume oil and the objects with the sole intention of gifting them who's like, let's not, let's stop bringing wine to people's house for dinner. Let's bring something else. Like, let's bring something that people will engage with in a different way. And remember in that moment, you know, as we started doing that and people began to want more, it ultimately became a business. And that transition from making something without the end game in mind with just the idea that we wanted to make something to share. Allowing that to transition into something else is super exciting.
Andrew: I think it's the same way with our clients, um, and the work that we do for them that we're ultimately looking at how to amplify their experience, how to make their dream, which is their business or their success, that much more attainable for them. How to make that experience that they're going to have that stronger. You know, again, if your client is the feather, you're looking at that feather being like, Oh, you know, this is so beautiful. Everyone needs to see those. And in figuring out how to communicate that to people and knowing that in the end, you know, this feather is going to be celebrated. It's the, it's the best, the best possible outcome that they're, you know, that there's this kind of success that comes through that diligence and that their experience of, into what their dream is. The experience itself actually informs that process and becomes an asset through living it.
Alex: And this is why I love you and Charlie's project so much because I do think that with, uh, with incense there, for me at least, there's this level of grounding, right? I, I love sense. I'm a very scent type person. There's always something burning and I know what I like for different times, right? It puts me into a certain frame of mind and it also, that translates so much through your story and how this all came about. Um, and, and I do think it's, it's, it's really interesting when you think about what advice you would give to other people in terms of how to take something and grounded and have something tangible to move forward with. Uh, what would you say to folks who are trying to kind of work through this process?
Andrew: The most important thing is to be observant to how you respond to certain things, for us, I'm going to, I'm going to stick in the world of scent. So how you respond to scent throughout the day. I think it's a big mistake actually for people to choose one scent. And that's, that's what I always have in mind. It's just the one candle. I have it going in my house like all the time. I guess my advice to people in that sense is to be really aware of how different sense impact you and then to really use that through the day. It sounds very aroma therapy, but the truth is you can, you can influence your own energy through the day in the most powerful way. I know that when I wake up in the morning, there's a certain energy I need and I'm not a coffee drinker anymore. And I rely on scientists to kind of give me that pep to something in the morning.
Andrew: It shifts my energy, the ritual actually through the lighting and the stake, whether that's a brief meditation, whether it's just breathing and being like, I'm taking these few minutes and this scent that I'm lighting through the incense, this, this center is actually solidifying the experience. And for me that is a ritual. That in itself is, is a way in which I'm mark the new day. So throughout the day I do the same thing. I take these moment, I take moments and it really, you know, we're all busy, we're all running around town. We have things to accomplish throughout the day, but it's taking that, you know, three minutes solid takes to sort of reset and recharge your sense through that, through that intention, setting, through that use of scent and allowing the sense to become really the catalyst to shape the emotion. Because with that part of the day, so certainly is I fall asleep. It's a different, you know, when, when I'm ready to get into bed, it's a different sense when I'm sitting at my desk. It's a different sense. It's, you know, one is about focus, one is maybe about play time, maybe one is about sleeping one, it's about Sunday. You know, you can kind of use this really ultimately endless number of ingredients to become sort of catalyst and emotional memory triggers.
Alex: So what's next for Cinnamon Projects?
Andrew: Oh, Cinnamon Projects. So many things. So the whole time we have been working on line of t, so thinking about all of these same ingredients that we're using, but different ways that you can use them. You used a certain smell, a certain tastes, this sort of calming quality and also allowing for that just brief moments in life. We're working on some textile ideas. I'm working on jewelry. Again, Full Circle. Those are all up and coming
Alex: And I'm probably going to be you one of your favorite customers
Andrew: And you know, ultimately, you know, we're just so excited to do is continue to build on that dynamic and relationship that we've, I mean the dialogue has been so amazing around creating the scents and so satisfying when you have a suspicion or your intuition, you know, we wanted to make something that would be impactful for people emotionally and that they connect to in that sense. And for someone to write you a letter and say, I wore, I wore 8:00 AM for my wedding and now that brings me back to that moment all the time. I just wanted you to know there's the inspiration. You're like, ah, oh, we did it. It worked. Someone got it. It's going, we're doing it. So ultimately what we, what we're passionate about making next are more of those facets in that sort of ritual wrong. You know, what is your favorite blanket and how you connect to that.
Andrew: And you know, something that we returned to back to the fetus having a sense of smell. Uh, that's one of the, that's one of the reasons you can leave your blanket with your baby and your baby will stop crying because that will allow you to step away is because of that sense of smell. So it's these, these kind of like finding these objects that have the capacity to hold that emotion and memory and function all at the same time to become part of that ritual. So the t is so important on that level. The textile. So important, the memories that we put into a piece of jewelry that we decide to wear on our bodies is a big deal. So we're moving on it
Alex: And, and it's gotta be deeply gratifying for you and Charlie because this isn't something that you pushed for, for some consumer facing commerce facing goal. This was a of your own emotions of your own introspection and, and you have been validated. How does that feel?
Andrew: It's great. Charlie and I are, we're passionate about what we do. We work a lot. If I haven't mentioned before, Charlie and I are married, so you know, this has been a way working together has been this way to create a kind of seamless life. Generally. We're just excited about the next, about the next step, the next piece of, um, the next opportunity to, to make something. But we have fun. There's no break between, you know, honey, this is what I did at work today. We'd get that opportunity to have a continuous conversation and a lot of ideas come from that. It's, it's really satisfying.
Alex: If Andrew Cinnamon hasn't convinced you to work a bit of scene-setting scent into your day, I don't know what, will. You can try five of Cinnamon Projects' scents through the Series One incense box. My podcasting scent of choice is 12:00 AM. It's a warm enveloping smell of amber, clove, lavender and oak moss. I'm also partial to the 2:00 AM, so I guess that makes me a bit of a night owl. I've been appreciating both from my Bronze Circa Brass Incense Burner. It's functional and frankly it's also a piece of art that I feature proudly in my living room. These can all be found in the Finding Inspo store on Verishop where you'll always get free two-day shipping and free returns. Just head to verishop.com/inspo. And just for Finding Inspo listeners, new Verishop customers can take 20% off their first purchase with the code INSPOCP.
Alex: I would really appreciate if you'd subscribe and review this podcast. It'll help new listeners find us and that's so important. Since we're brand new, I would also love to hear where you are finding and spo from my conversation with Andrew. You can reach me on Instagram and Twitter at @alexbarinka or at @inspopodcast. Starting in episode three I'll be sharing some of your views and comments at the end of each episode. This podcast was produced by me, Alex Barinka with production and editing support from Wonder Media Network. Thanks so much for listening and see you soon.