STUDIO JOURNAL | September ISSUE 2026

THE STUDIO LETTER

We had plans for South Africa. A list really. Places to see, things to make, ground to cover. But the moment we saw family again, that list slowly faded.

We keep learning this the hard way. Rest isn't the reward you get once the work is done. It is part of the work. You cannot keep pouring from an empty cup and call it dedication. At some point it just becomes running on empty, and calling it commitment. So we filled ours back up. With nature, with family, with fun and laughter. We know how that can sound, almost indulgent, something to feel guilty about while you're meant to be building something. We've felt that guilt too. But maybe it needs saying, the same way we needed to hear it. You are worth the quiet moment. You are worth the deeper breath. You are worth the time it takes to slow down, be still and rest.

So we took the time to be fully present. We sipped our coffee a little slower in front of the fireplace, went on long walks with friends. We enjoyed too many desserts and hiked one of the Seven Wonders of Nature, Table Mountain, something that has been on the bucket list for quite some time. We finally got to celebrate getting married with all our South African loved ones. We danced and sung and watched rugby while the uncles "braai'd" outside. It was enough to fill our souls. But by the time this reaches you, we're already somewhere over the ocean, on our way back to Sydney. And there is a lot waiting for us there. New artworks taking shape. Products close to ready. Our first samples of Atmosphere in our hands, The Bloom Capsules continuing, a new collection forming, a few studio concepts still finding their edges.

So rest when it's time to rest. Focus when it's time to focus. Be fully present in both. For us, It’s time to focus now.

Here we go.

The Robertsons

INTRODUCING: WHERE THE GARDEN BEGINS

It's up. It's home.

The wall takes it now. The light in that room becomes its light. The people who walk past it every day become the ones who know it best, not us.

We call it "Waar Die Tuin Begin" (Where The Garden Begins)

Named in Afrikaans as a small nod to a country we love, and to a heritage we carry with us. But the name isn't just a tribute. This commission marks the beginning of a new chapter and vision long in the making. We have long spoken of the garden of ROBERTSONKUR and what it represents, and this artwork was the first step in that direction. It's a special one. And we couldn't have asked for a better place for it to begin.

Somewhere in the Western Cape, there's a garden that starts on a wall now.

We're incredibly thankful.

IN THE AIR

Between the moments of physically creating something, there is a time when you need to communicate your vision. This month, that's where we've lived. Back and forth with our team, conversation after conversation, getting it just right.

So much of it comes down to how the whole story gets told at once. Ink, garden, canvas, all held inside one small, quiet object. What matters to us is nature, and texture, and the honesty of both. Whether something feels grounded when you hold it, the weight of it settling into your palm like a stone from a riverbed, or whether it should feel almost weightless, like you're holding air itself. Whether the fragrance should carry you somewhere, lift you off the ground for a second, or hold you exactly where you are. We've gone back and forth more times than we can count over a shade of white, a shade of brown, because this is the first piece of the ROBERTSONKUR world to live outside an actual artwork, and it needs to be a colour we could stare at forever, the same way we'd stare at a canvas. We wanted texture too, something with a little grain to it under your fingers, the way a garden always has more going on beneath the surface than what you see. And we wanted the release of it to feel like the way rain feels the moment it arrives. 

We want this project to permeate the fragrance of everything we love. When you hold it in your hands, we want it to feel like holding a childhood memory. Running through fields of green. The sound of birds waking you in the morning. The sun on your skin after a long winter. Something natural, and true, and pure.

This is scent as a way for art to live in more than one sense. Each note traced back to a moment the paint first touched the canvas, to whatever was in the air the day a piece was born, the light, the quiet, the feeling that made it worth making. Art can take any form it wants, and this is simply another one of them. Our hope is that when you hold this in your hands, It becomes your world. A moment, relived, every time you breathe it in.