Raw Material

Some of the seeds that Brazil Native work with...

The Acai (AH-sci-EE) Seed After

The Acai (AH-sci-EE) Seed Before

The Acai (AH-sci-EE) Legend

There was a village near the edges of the Para River that was rapidly increasing in population which led to food becoming scarce. The tribe leader, Itaki, declared that no woman may bear a child and if she did, the baby would be sacrificed. Itaki's daughter, Iaca, was bearing a child at the time; her father was both excited and abhorred because he knew that this child would be treated the same as all others during this trying time. Throughout the pregnancy, Iaçá prayed to Tupá that he would show her father a food that could save the tribe from famine. Unfortunately, nothing happened.
The child was born and sacrificed; Iaca was devastated--she cried day and night and did not eat anything while enclosed in her hut for days. One of the nights in her hut, she heard her daughter's cry from the forest. Iaca ran into the forest and found her daughter by the side of a slender palm tree. Attempting to embrace her child, the image disappeared and the tribe found Iaca dead with a smile on her face. Her eyes were still wide open looking up looking up at the bountiful dark purple fruits on top of the palm tree.
The tribe ordered to have the fruits brought down and have the juice removed. With that, they obtained a reddish wine that soon became the diet for the tribe.
Itaki called the fruit Açaí (Iaçá inverted) in memory of his daughter and allowed the birth of children again. The tribe prospered again. Today, that population is known as Belém, in the state of Pará, Brazil and the rest is history.

Handicraft work is one of the richest and most ancient ways people have to express their culture. Imagine the handcraft production of a nation whose ascendants came from all over the world, mixing their ways of facing and expressing life. Imagine a nation that creates the most exotic products using materials strictly provided by nature.
We want to rescue the natural. Walk along the streets. Go for a walk with your family. How much of natural can you see? The contact with nature can be established by inserting handmade products around you. They might be similar, but never identical, which makes them more valuable. They bring not only beauty, but also the lightness of nature.

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and left
And sometimes looking behind me,
And what I see at each moment
Is what I never saw before,
And I’m very good at noticing things.
I’m capable of feeling the same wonder
A newborn child would feel
If he noticed that he’d really and truly been born.
I feel at each moment that I’ve just been born
Into a completely new world…

I believe in the world as in a daisy,
Because I see it. But I don’t think about it,
Because to think is to not understand.
The world wasn’t made for us to think about it
(To think is to have eyes that aren’t well)
But to look at it and to be in agreement.

I have no philosophy, I have senses…
If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is
But because I love it, and for that very reason,
Because those who love never know what they love
Or why they love, or what love is.

To love is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not to think…

"The Keeper of Sheep II - Fernando Pessoa"